Plants make aspirin-like chemical
When plants are stressed out, they generate aspirin-like chemicals. The aspirin isn't used to reduce headaches, primarily because plants don't have heads. Scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research detected significant quantities of methyl salicyate, a chemical form of aspirin, above a forest canopy. The capability of plants to emit the chemical had been known previously but only observed in a laboratory setting. From a press release:
(Lead researcher Thomas) Karl and his colleagues speculate that the methyl salicylate has two functions. One of these is to stimulate plants to begin a process known as systemic acquired resistance, which is analogous to an immune response in an animal. This helps a plant to both resist and recover from disease."Plants in Forest Emit Aspirin Chemical to Deal with Stress" (UCAR)
The methyl salicylate also may be a mechanism whereby a stressed plant communicates to neighboring plants, warning them of the threat. Researchers in laboratories have demonstrated that a plant may build up its defenses if it is linked in some way to another plant that is emitting the chemical. Now that the NCAR team has demonstrated that methyl salicylate can build up in the atmosphere above a stressed forest, scientists are speculating that plants may use the chemical to activate an ecosystem-wide immune response...
The discovery raises the possibility that farmers, forest managers, and others may eventually be able to start monitoring plants for early signs of a disease, an insect infestation, or other types of stress. At present, they often do not know if an ecosystem is unhealthy until there are visible indicators, such as dead leaves.
"A chemical signal is a very sensitive way to detect plant stress, and it can be an order of magnitude more effective than using visual inspections," Karl says.
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I work in this field. Reading about work done in my field always makes me distrust everything I read about other fields.
This has absolutely been demonstrated before outside of the laboratory. This is just the first time it's been seen at the level of a forest. Previously, it's been observed in communities of smaller plants. It's part of a suite of chemical communications between plants that trigger cool responses, such as attracting predators and parasites of caterpillars and other leaf-munchers. It's been known for decades, if not longer. Most advances are incremental improvements on previous work, it would be nice to have some acknowledgment of that in the press.
Those little plastic packets of "plant freshness maintainer" or whatever they call it, that come with cut flowers, often contain some aspirin.
Aspirin is acetyl salicylic acid (found in willow bark).
Methyl salicylate can be found in the bark of sweet birch.
Distillations of the bark are/were folk remedies.
It seems like breeding plants for higher methyl salicylate output is like making them stressed all the time. We aren't just killing the trees, we're making them nervous wrecks too. ;)
Someone said root beer?
"a chemical form of aspirin"
Aspirin is a chemical already.
Methyl salicylate = wintergreen. Yum.
I wonder if farmers, forest managers and others may also be a source of the stress they are monitoring.
Several beat me to it. Must be a slow news day. It was discovered that certain plants produced "aspirin-like" similar compounds something like 3500 years ago.
oil of wintergreen (methyl salicylate)
........O
........||
....C - C - O -CH3
/....\\
C......C
||.....|
C......C
\...//..\
...C......OH
aspirin
........O
........||
....C - C - O - H
/....\\
C......C
||.....|
C......C
\...//..\
...C......OH
ignore the dots. I had to put 'em in cuz spaces get eaten.
wow. yep, that's it. wow.
Next step: Asprin-like novels?
More posts from David, please. Wonderful things.
Next, the plants will learn to communicate through the soil and organize a revolt against mankind, dispensing their aspirin-like chemicals into the air until all humans become intoxicated and start fumbling around without fear of pain in a drunken stupor, setting themselves on fire, sticking pointy objects into their jugulars and driving their cars off of cliffs.
Hey, I should write a screenplay about that!
...oh. crap.
dispensing their aspirin-like chemicals into the air until all humans become intoxicated
Actually, it would increase our bleeding time, and we'd hemorrhage to death, providing fertilizer for the killer trees.
Wow... you'd think aspirin might have originally come from trees or something.
@KURTMAC:
Actually- you should be on Lewis Black's "Root of All Evil". That sounds exactly like one of their "ripple of evil" bits. :)
Trr 10: That is extremely cool. I had no idea they were so close in structure.
Wolfwitch 17: If I'm not mistaken, that's the plot of the latest Shyalalalmayayan movie.
Has anyone pointed out that aspirin comes from plants yet?
"The aspirin isn't used to reduce headaches, primarily because plants don't have heads."
You know- it's been a long day at my computer doing sciency-stuff. That just made me laugh out loud. Thanks- I needed that!
And Schorsch- I hear you. When so many people give their lives to add to the knowledge pile bit by nearly anonymous bit, it's so frustrating that the last guy to toss on the data bit that tips it over to "sexy science" and gets his name in the papers.
people have been spraying their tomato plants with a dilute aspirin spray for years to increase productivity.
I read somewhere once that a researcher (can't remember who or where I read it) thinks that these compounds should be treated as a vitamin. We used to get what we need from fruit and veg but now the production of fruit and veg is so sanitised that they don't produce enough of it. I'm not sure what we use it for, but I seem to remember there are inverse correlations with all sorts of nasty diseases.
Kurtmac,
I like your idea, but you shouldn't write it about the plants, you should make it about fungi! They already rule the soil.
quorum sensing in bacteria, why not "communication" among plants? Do you suppose all those Amazonian curanderos simply meant what they said?
#18 Xopher: Thank you for the clarification. Apparently you and I were the only ones to have seen latest Shyalalalmayayan film, thus negating the carefully planned and executed attempt at comedy in my previous post.
@10 TRR: I'm not going even attempt any ASCII art molecular structures, but unless I am misinterpreting yours I think you have aspirin wrong -- though I have to salute your dedication in including the double bonds to suggest aromaticity in the phenyl ring. Your version looks to me to be salicylic acid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salicyclic_acid), while aspirin is, of course, ACETYL salicylic acid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspirin).
The difference, for the non-chemists in the audience, is that aspirin contains an acetic acid molecule (think vinegar) bonded to the OH group on the phenyl ring via an ester linkage (i.e. the OH on the ring and the OH in CH3COOH (acetic acid) get together and eliminate water to form a structure called an ester).
And @16 Narual and @19 Spazzm: aspirin does NOT come from plants/trees. Various salicylate compounds are naturally occurring, especially in willow trees (Salix spp.), hence the name SALicylic. However, the acetyl ester -- which is aspirin -- is a man-made compound first synthesized in France in the mid 1800s and first marketed by Bayer around the turn of the last century.
You shouldn't assume that even very closely related chemical structures have similar properties. Have a look at thalidomide sometime (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide). The drug is composed of two molecular structures that appear virtually identical to the layperson; the difference between the two is that they are mirror images of each other (enantiomers). However, the one structure (the R enantiomer) is a useful drug (reduces nausea) while the other structure (the S) is horrifyingly teratogenic.
and thank you for that, noble geek of mass spectroscopy.
KurtMac 25: Apparently you and I were the only ones to have seen latest Shyalalalmayayan film, thus negating the carefully planned and executed attempt at comedy in my previous post.
Actually it was only you. I don't go to a movie when the commercial depresses me. I guessed the plot from your post, and I also laughed at the joke (well, not so much a LOL as a SQTS). And fond as I am of the Unspellable One, I'm not sorry I gave his latest effort a miss, especially now that I know how it turns out.
MSGeek,
You're right, how embarrassing. I left off the acetyl group that distinguishes aspirin from salicylic acid. It should have been
oil of wintergreen (methyl salicylate)
........O
........||
....C - C - O -CH3
/....\\
C......C
||.....|
C......C
\...//..\
...C......OH
aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid)
........O
........||
....C - C - O - H
/....\\
C......C
||.....|
C......C
\...//..\
...C......O - C - CH3
...............||
...............O
and your point is a very good one about similar chemical structures often having very different biological effects. and an acetyl group or a methyl group is certainly different in chemical behavior from a hydroxyl.