Ars Technica: Science Sunday (1/25/2004)

Ars Technica: Science Sunday (1/25/2004): "Distributed computing plant cells?

Utah State University researchers were investigating how plants regulate their uptake and loss of gases and ran into an interesting discovery. Plant leaves have structures called stomata which open to allow carbon dioxide in, but close to prevent water vapor from leaving. Across the surface of a plant leaf, the researchers looked at the distribution of open and closed stomata and discovered they open and close in specific patterns.

By studying the distributions of these patches of open and closed stomata in leaves of the cocklebur plant, Peak and colleagues found specific patterns reminiscent of distributed computing. Patches of open or closed stomata sometimes move around a leaf at constant speed, for example.

The patterning does not seem to be indicative of a single chemical signal propagating across the leaf and the Utah State group matched the behavior to single cells computing their state and integrating it with information from nearby cells. This method would be a more efficient way of regulating the cellular state of the entire plant than having individual cells opening and closing on their own. "