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Tag Archives: stresses
As Destiny 2 players celebrate long-awaited character customization, Bungie stresses “we don’t have any current plans to monetize this” – or add a way to change races – Gamesradar
- As Destiny 2 players celebrate long-awaited character customization, Bungie stresses “we don’t have any current plans to monetize this” – or add a way to change races Gamesradar
- Finally, Destiny 2 Will Let You Change Your Character’s Appearance IGN
- Six Years Later, ‘Destiny 2’ Will Let You Change Your Face And Gender Forbes
- It’s taken 10 years, but Destiny 2 is finally getting the most important feature for any MMO: character customization that lets you tweak your appearance anytime Gamesradar
- Destiny 2’s Season Of The Wish Isn’t Over; New Story, Moments Of Triumph Coming This Month GameSpot
Biden announces 5 federal judicial nominees and stresses their varied professional backgrounds – ABC News
- Biden announces 5 federal judicial nominees and stresses their varied professional backgrounds ABC News
- Biden nominee would be first Muslim American on a federal appeals court NBC News
- Biden nominates Marylander to 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals, would be first openly LGBTQ member on that court Baltimore Sun
- Biden announces 5 federal judicial nominees, including first Muslim American to U.S. circuit court if confirmed CBS News
- Biden judicial pick would be the first Muslim American to serve on any federal appellate court CNN
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Using Running to Escape Everyday Stresses May Lead To Exercise Dependence Instead of Mental Well-being
Summary: Running can help some escape from their everyday stresses, however, some recreational runners show signs of exercise dependence. Exercise dependence could be the result of maladaptive escapism where one self-suppresses to avoid negative experiences. This can be detrimental to overall well-being.
Source: Frontiers
Recreational running offers a lot of physical and mental health benefits – but some people can develop exercise dependence, a form of addiction to physical activity which can cause health issues. Shockingly, signs of exercise dependence are common even in recreational runners.
A study published in Frontiers in Psychology investigated whether the concept of escapism can help us understand the relationship between running, well-being, and exercise dependence.
“Escapism is an everyday phenomenon among humans, but little is known regarding its motivational underpinnings, how it affects experiences, and the psychological outcomes from it,” said Dr Frode Stenseng of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, lead author of the paper.
Running to explore or to evade?
“Escapism is often defined as ‘an activity, a form of entertainment, etc. that helps you avoid or forget unpleasant or boring things’. In other words, many of our everyday activities may be interpreted as escapism,” said Stenseng.
“The psychological reward from escapism is reduced self-awareness, less rumination, and a relief from one’s most pressing, or stressing, thoughts and emotions.”
Escapism can restore perspective, or it can act as a distraction from problems that need to be tackled. Escapism which is adaptive, seeking out positive experiences, is referred to as self-expansion. Meanwhile, maladaptive escapism, avoiding negative experiences, is called self-suppression. Effectively, running as exploration or as evasion.
“These two forms of escapism are stemming from two different mindsets, to promote a positive mood, or prevent a negative mood,” said Stenseng.
Escapist activities used for self-expansion have more positive effects but also more long-term benefits. Self-suppression, by contrast, tends to suppress positive feelings as well as negative ones and lead to avoidance.
Self-suppression associated with exercise dependence
The team recruited 227 recreational runners, half men and half women, with widely varying running practices. They were asked to fill out questionnaires which investigated three different aspects of escapism and exercise dependence: an escapism scale which measured preference for self-expansion or self-suppression, an exercise dependence scale, and a satisfaction with life scale designed to measure the participants’ subjective wellbeing.
The scientists found that there was very little overlap between runners who favored self-expansion and runners who preferred self-suppression modes of escapism. Self-expansion was positively related with wellbeing, while self-suppression was negatively related to wellbeing.
Self-suppression and self-expansion were both linked to exercise dependence, but self-suppression was much more strongly linked to it. Neither escapism mode was linked to age, gender, or amount of time a person spent running, but both affected the relationship between wellbeing and exercise dependence.
Whether or not a person fulfilled criteria for exercise dependence, a preference for self-expansion would still be linked to a more positive sense of their own wellbeing.
Although exercise dependence corrodes the potential wellbeing gains from exercise, it seems that perceiving lower wellbeing may be both a cause and an outcome of exercise dependency: the dependency might be driven by lower wellbeing as well as promoting it.
Similarly, experiencing positive self-expansion might be a psychological motive that promotes exercise dependence.
“More studies using longitudinal research designs are necessary to unravel more of the motivational dynamics and outcomes in escapism,” said Stenseng. “But these findings may enlighten people in understanding their own motivation, and be used for therapeutical reasons for individuals striving with a maladaptive engagement in their activity.”
About this exercise addiction and psychology research news
Author: Angharad Brewer Gillham
Source: Frontiers
Contact: Angharad Brewer Gillham – Frontiers
Image: The image is in the public domain
See also
Original Research: Open access.
“Running to Get “Lost”? Two Types of Escapism in Recreational Running and Their Relations to Exercise Dependence and Subjective Well-Being” by Frode Stenseng et al. Frontiers in Psychology
Abstract
Running to Get “Lost”? Two Types of Escapism in Recreational Running and Their Relations to Exercise Dependence and Subjective Well-Being
Escapism is a fundamental motivation in many forms of activity engagements. At its core, escapism is “a habitual diversion of the mind … as an escape from reality or routine”.
Accordingly, escapism may entail many adaptive and maladaptive psychological antecedents, covariates, and outcomes. However, few studies have been conducted on escapism as a motivational mindset in running.
Here, in a sample of recreational runners (N = 227), we applied a two-dimensional model of escapism, comprising self-expansion (adaptive escapism) and self-suppression (maladaptive escapism), and examined how they were related to exercise dependence and subjective well-being.
First, confirmatory factor analyses showed that the escapism dimensions were highly diversifiable in the sample. Then, correlational analyses showed that self-expansion was positively correlated to subjective well-being, whereas self-suppression was negatively related to well-being.
Self-suppression was more strongly related to exercise dependence compared to self-expansion.
Finally, path analyses evidenced an explanatory role of self-expansion and self-suppression in the inverse relationship between exercise dependence and well-being. In conclusion, the present findings support escapism as a relevant framework for understanding the relationship between exercise dependence in running and subjective well-being.
Powell stresses need for Fed’s political independence while tackling inflation
U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell attends a press conference in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 14, 2022.
Liu Jie | Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Tuesday stressed the need for the central bank to be free of political influence while it tackles persistently high inflation.
In a speech delivered to Sweden’s Riksbank, Powell noted that stabilizing prices requires making tough decisions that can be unpopular politically.
“Price stability is the bedrock of a healthy economy and provides the public with immeasurable benefits over time. But restoring price stability when inflation is high can require measures that are not popular in the short term as we raise interest rates to slow the economy,” the chair said in prepared remarks.
“The absence of direct political control over our decisions allows us to take these necessary measures without considering short-term political factors,” he added.
Powell’s remarks came at a forum to discuss central bank independence, and were to be followed by a question-and-answer session.
The speech did not contain any direct clues about where policy is ahead for a Fed that raised interest rates seven times in 2022, for a total of 4.25 percentage points, and has indicated that more increases likely are on the way this year.
While criticism of Fed actions by elected leaders is often done in quieter tones, the Powell Fed has faced vocal opposition from both sides of the political aisle.
Former President Donald Trump ripped the central bank when it was raising rates during his administration, while progressive leaders such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have criticized the current round of hikes. President Joe Biden has largely resisted commenting on Fed moves while noting that it is primarily the central bank’s responsibility to tackle inflation.
Powell has repeatedly stressed that political factors have not weighed on his actions.
In another part of Tuesday’s speech, he addressed calls from some lawmakers for the Fed to use its regulatory powers to address climate change. Powell noted that the Fed should “stick to our knitting and not wander off to pursue perceived social benefits that are not tightly linked to our statutory goals and authorities.”
While the Fed has asked big banks to examine their financial readiness in case of major climate-related events such as hurricanes and floods, Powell said that’s as far as it should go.
“Decisions about policies to directly address climate change should be made by the elected branches of government and thus reflect the public’s will as expressed through elections,” he said. “But without explicit congressional legislation, it would be inappropriate for us to use our monetary policy or supervisory tools to promote a greener economy or to achieve other climate-based goals. We are not, and will not be, a ‘climate policymaker.'”
The Fed this year will, however, launch a pilot program that calls for the nation’s six biggest banks to take part in a “scenario analysis” aimed at testing institutions’ stability in the event of major climate events.
The exercise will take place apart from the so-called stress tests that the Fed uses to test how banks would fare under hypothetical economic downturns. Participating institutions are Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo.
Lakers media day takeaways: Pelinka willing to trade first-round picks; Westbrook stresses professionalism
After a disappointing 2021-22 season that ended without even a trip to the play-in round, the Los Angeles Lakers were expected to make massive changes before the 2022-23 campaign rolled around. On some level, they did just that. Only five players returned from last year’s debacle, but with Russell Westbrook among them, the core problems of limited depth, defense and shooting that doomed the Lakers a season ago continue to plague the purple and gold. Expectations will therefore remain relatively low until the Lakers prove that they don’t need to make another move.
On Monday, all of the team’s key figures attempted to do just that. New head coach Darvin Ham, president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka and the entire roster (save Dennis Schroder, who is dealing with a visa issue) spoke on media day about the nightmare season they just endured, the one that’s still to come and everything in between. Here are the biggest takeaways from media day as the Lakers attempt to work their way back into the championship picture.
Lakers willing to deal two first-round picks… for the right return
The biggest question of the offseason was originally when the Lakers would trade Westbrook. As the months passed, it shifted to why Westbrook hadn’t been traded. There were plenty of theories. Ham made it clear that he had a plan for Westbrook, so perhaps he wasn’t as bullish on sending him out as others. There are obvious financial motivations for keeping Westbrook. And of course, there’s the dreaded Lakers tax, a supposed premium teams charge the NBA’s most prominent team in negotiations, especially when they’re desperate.
But Occam’s razor tells us that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one, and the simplest explanation here is that Westbrook is widely viewed as a negative asset and the Lakers do not want to give up assets just to remove him from the team. Getting anything of value back would mean giving up both of their available first-round picks. Pelinka made it clear that he is willing to give those picks up.
“One thing that needs to be made clear is, there was a lot of speculation, will the Lakers trade their picks? Will they not trade their picks? Let me be abundantly clear: we have one of the great players in LeBron James to ever play the game on our team. He committed to us with a long-term contract, a three-year contract. So of course, we will do everything we can, picks included, to make deals that give us a chance to help LeBron get to the end. He committed to our organization. That’s gotta be a bilateral commitment, and it’s there.”
Here’s where things get tricky: as this offseason proved, he’s not going to give up those picks just for the sake of doing so. As Pelinka pointed out, “you have one shot to make a trade with multiple picks, so if you make that trade, and I’m not talking about any particular player on our team, but if you make that trade, it has to be the right one. You have one shot to do it. So we’re being very thoughtful around the decisions on when and how to use draft capital in a way that will improve our roster.”
The implication is that the Lakers were not satisfied with the offers on the table. As far as the reporting tells us, the two primary deals discussed involved Myles Turner and Buddy Hield from Indiana or Bojan Bogdanovic and a selection of other role players from the Jazz. The Lakers may have traded Westbrook already if Kyrie Irving was truly on the table, but all signs suggest that he was not, and he is set to play out the final year of his contract in Brooklyn. If the Lakers are waiting for another player of Irving’s caliber to become available, well, they might never make a trade. Role player deals will be available all season. Eventually, the Lakers will have to decide how much of the season they’re willing to sacrifice waiting for the perfect trade.
Availability is the best ability
Over the last two seasons, LeBron James has played in only 101 games. Anthony Davis has played in even fewer, just 76. Whether Westbrook is around or not, the Lakers have no chance of contending without their two best players. Keeping them healthy is going to be a priority this season, and Ham promised to do his part. “I don’t need LeBron or AD playing playoff minutes in October, November or December,” the new coach said. Notably, Ham is coming from Milwaukee, whose head coach, Mike Budenholzer, is famously stingy with minutes for his stars. Giannis Antetokounmpo has never topped 33 minutes per game since Budenholzer took over as Milwaukee’s coach.
James has typically been against lowering his workload. “I think this whole narrative of ‘LeBron needs more rest’ or I should take more rest or I should take time here, it’s become a lot bigger than what it actually is,” James told reporters after a 2021 loss to Washington. “I’ve never talked about it, I don’t talk about it, I don’t believe in it. We all need more rest, s—. This is a fast turnaround from last season, and we all wish we could have more rest. But I’m here to work, I’m here to punch my clock in and be available to my teammates.”
But James sang a different tune on media day. James said that he is fully healthy after an injury-riddled season and said that he would “focus my game on being available.” What exactly that means remains to be seen, but on a team loaded with ball-handlers, the Lakers are likely hoping to limit his minutes as he approaches his 38th birthday.
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The new culture
According to Anthony Davis, the Lakers had training camp shirts made with the word “chip” on them to represent the chip the team has on its shoulder going into the season. For the first time since Davis arrived in Los Angeles, the Lakers are underdogs. They aren’t a superteam or a defending champion. They’re just trying to prove they belong in the playoff picture. That has seemingly changed the entire culture of the team.
No player better embodies that culture than Patrick Beverley. When discussing what went wrong last season, Beverley, as an outsider, cited the “will factor” as something that worked against them. “Will they get back on defense? Are they willing to do the small things? I didn’t think so with the unit they had last season. That’s no discredit to anyone. But as a basketball player, I feel like I have top-10, top-11 mind when it comes to IQ in basketball, coming from a player like that, me, I didn’t know if they had the will factor. I didn’t know if they wanted to make the extra rotation. I didn’t know if they wanted to get on the floor, get dirty, scrape your knees getting a loose ball. I didn’t know that. As a leader, going to a team like that, if they didn’t do it, I’ll do it. Hopefully they’ll pick up from there.”
Beverley has a history of instilling such a culture on the teams that he plays for. He embodies the underdog spirit that the Lakers will now have to embrace. For now, he’s the guy who consistently does those things. If the Lakers are going to win anything this season, that will have to rub off on the rest of the team.
A business relationship
When Westbrook split with longtime agent Thad Foucher this offseason, Foucher’s statement indicated that Westbrook simply did not want to remain in Los Angeles. The feeling was, in all likelihood, mutual. But as Westbrook explained Monday, it ultimately doesn’t matter.
“Whether they want me here or not doesn’t really matter. My job is to be professional, show up to work like I’ve always done thus far, do my job the best way I know how to, and that’s it. We’ve all had jobs that sometimes people at our jobs don’t like us or don’t want us there, as you guys can probably attest to in any other job across the world. As a professional and as a working man I have to do my job and do it the best way I know how to be able to support and take of my family, and that’s what I’ll do.”
A ringing endorsement of his relationship with the Lakers, that was not. Pelinka went out of his way to praise Westbrook, but the fact remains that he is making $47 million this season on a roster devoid of tradable salary. If the Lakers are going to trade those two first-round picks, as Pelinka said they would for the right offer, Westbrook almost has to be in the deal.
Until then? His future is unclear. Ham refused to commit to a starting lineup, but he spoke positively about Westbrook’s attitude this offseason. “He’s been awesome,” Ham said. “Everything that I’ve asked of him he’s done. Everything has been about being selfless, being team-oriented, defense.” Of course, these were talking points repeated frequently before last season. Lakers fans can be forgiven for not believing it until they see it.
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Life’s Stresses Can Make People Focus More on Their Romantic Partner’s Negative Behavior
Summary: Stress can have a detrimental impact on relationships. When feeling stressed, a person is more likely to notice and reflect upon their partner’s negative behaviors rather than positive behavior.
Source: Society for Personality and Social Psychology
Stressful life circumstances can affect how married couples interact, but can they affect how partners see each other? A person experiencing stress is more likely to notice their spouse’s negative behavior than positive, according to a new study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science.
Prior research has focused on how stress influences behavior, but this study suggests that stress could affect what actions partners notice in the first place. The negative actions being monitored included a spouse breaking a promise, showing anger or impatience, or criticizing their partner.
“We found that individuals who reported experiencing more stressful life events outside of their relationship, such as problems at work, were especially likely to notice if their partner behaved in an inconsiderate manner,” says lead author Dr. Lisa Neff, of the University of Texas at Austin.
Researchers asked 79 heterosexual newlywed couples to complete a short survey each night for 10 days, in which they documented both their own and their partner’s behavior. Before beginning this portion of the study, participants completed a questionnaire in which they shared details on stressful events in their life.
Studying newlyweds drives home the significance of the results, Dr. Neff notes, because couples are especially likely to focus on each other’s positive behavior and overlook negative actions during the “honeymoon” period.
“For many people, the past few years have been difficult – and the stress of the pandemic continues to linger,” says Dr. Neff. “If stress focuses individuals’ attention toward their partner’s more inconsiderate behaviors, this is likely to take a toll on the relationship.”
Researchers noted a single stressful day was not enough to make someone zero in on their partner’s negative behavior, but a longer accumulation of stressful life circumstances could cause this shift in focus.
The findings also suggest that those under stress were not any less likely to notice their partner’s positive behavior, but they were more likely to notice inconsiderate actions.
While it’s possible that being aware of the effects of stress could allow couples to correct their behavior and limit harm to the relationship, Dr. Neff notes that this will remain speculation until it is studied further. She also says that future research would do well to expand this study beyond the honeymoon phase.
“One direction would be to examine if the harmful effects of stress might be even stronger among couples no longer in the newlywed phase of their relationships,” says Dr. Neff, “but the fact that we found these effects in a sample of newlyweds speaks to how impactful the effects of stress can be.”
About this stress and relationships research news
Author: Stephen Waldron
Source: Society for Personality and Social Psychology
Contact: Stephen Waldron – Society for Personality and Social Psychology
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Closed access.
“When Rose-Colored Glasses Turn Cloudy: Stressful Life Circumstances and Perceptions of Partner Behavior in Newlywed Marriage” by Lisa Neff et al. Social Psychology and Personality Science
See also
Abstract
When Rose-Colored Glasses Turn Cloudy: Stressful Life Circumstances and Perceptions of Partner Behavior in Newlywed Marriage
Stressful life circumstances can destabilize the couples’ relationships by increasing tensions and hindering positive exchanges between partners. Yet, stress may be linked not only to what individuals do in their relationship but also to what they see, as stress can shift individuals’ attentional focus toward negative stimuli.
To test this possibility, the current study examined whether individuals confronting more stressful life events and/or daily hassles are more likely to attentively monitor their partner’s negative relationship behaviors.
A daily diary study of 79 newlywed couples revealed that individuals who recently experienced more stressful life events were especially attuned to day-to-day fluctuations in their partner’s negative behaviors, but not their partner’s positive behaviors. Moreover, these individuals generally perceived their partner as enacting more negativity across the diary period compared with individuals who faced fewer stressful events.
These findings held when adjusting for several individual difference factors known to predict perceptual biases within relationships.
WHO stresses monkeypox surge not linked to monkeys amid attack reports | Monkeypox
The World Health Organization has stressed that monkeypox outbreaks are not linked to monkeys, following a number of reported attacks on the primates in Brazil.
“What people need to know is that the transmission we are seeing is happening between humans,” a WHO spokesperson, Margaret Harris, told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday.
She said the primates could not be blamed for the surge in monkeypox cases in Brazil after reports in a number of cities of physical attacks on and poisonings of monkeys.
In a natural reserve in Rio Preto, São Paulo state, 10 monkeys appeared to have been poisoned or intentionally injured in less than a week, according to the news site G1. Rescuers and activists suspect the monkeys were poisoned and attacked after three monkeypox cases were confirmed in the area.
Globally, more than 28,100 cases and 12 deaths have been recorded, as monkeypox infections have risen since May outside the west and central African countries where the disease has long been endemic.
To date, Brazil has registered more than 1,700 cases and one death, according to WHO data.
But Harris underlined that despite its name, monkeys are not the main transmitters of the disease and have nothing to do with the outbreak. Monkeypox received its name because the virus was first identified in monkeys kept for research in Denmark, but the disease is found in a number of animals, and most frequently in rodents.
While the virus could jump from animals to humans, the recent global explosion of cases was due to close-contact transmission between humans, Harris said. “The concern should be about where it [is circulating] in the human population and what humans can do to protect themselves from getting it and transmitting it,” she said. People “should certainly not be attacking any animals”.
Harris said the best way to rein in the virus was “if people recognise they have symptoms and go get help and medical care and take precautions to prevent it being transmitted”. That requires raising awareness among those most at risk.
Nearly all the cases so far have been among men who have sex with men, and the WHO has cautioned against stigmatisation of those infected.
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“Any stigmatisation of any person infected is going to increase the transmission, because if people are afraid of identifying themselves as being infected, then they will not get care and will not take precautions,” Harris said. “So do not stigmatise any animal or any human, because if you do do that, we will have a much larger outbreak.”
Plants Appear to Be Self-Medicating by Producing Their Own Aspirin When Stressed
You might find yourself reaching for a painkiller when a headache strikes, and it seems plants do something similar: when under stress from hazards around them, plants are capable of producing their own aspirin.
A new study takes a closer look at this particular self-defense mechanism in plants, and how the production of the active metabolite of aspirin – salicylic acid – is regulated.
Where salicylic acid has been used by humans for centuries as a treatment for pain and inflammation, in plants, it plays a fundamental role in signaling, regulation, and pathogen defense.
Produced in chloroplasts (the tiny green organelles where the process of photosynthesis is carried out), it is typically generated in response to stress.
“It’s like plants use a painkiller for aches and pains, just like we do,” says plant biologist Wilhelmina van de Ven from the University of California, Riverside (UCR).
To better understand the complex chain of reactions that plants perform when under stress, van de Ven and her team performed biochemical analyses on plants mutated to block the effects of key stress signaling pathways.
Environmental stresses produce reactive oxygen species (ROS) in all living organisms. One example you might be familiar with is sunburn on your skin if you spend too long exposed to direct sunlight without any sunscreen.
In the case of plants, these stresses include unfriendly insects, drought, and excessive heat. While high levels of ROS in plants can be lethal, smaller amounts have an important safety function – and so regulation is key.
Researchers used Rockcress or Arabidopsis as the model plant for the experiments. They focused on an early warning molecule called MEcPP, which has also been seen in bacteria and malaria parasites.
It seems that as MEcPP is accumulated in a plant, it triggers a chemical reaction and response, which includes salicylic acid.
That knowledge could help us modify plants to be more resistant to environmental hazards in the future.
“At non-lethal levels, ROS are like an emergency call to action, enabling the production of protective hormones such as salicylic acid,” says plant geneticist Jin-Zheng Wang from UCR. “ROS are a double-edged sword.”
“We’d like to be able to use the gained knowledge to improve crop resistance. That will be crucial for the food supply in our increasingly hot, bright world.”
There’s still a lot that we don’t know about the MEcPP molecule and its function, but understanding how this mechanism works could help scientists harness it for their own use: producing plants that are better able to cope with stresses and strains.
We know that plants, as well as animals, are under an increasing amount of pressure from a warming world, and it’s not clear how many species are going to be able to survive as average temperatures keep on climbing.
As the researchers point out, the stresses examined in this study – reactions to high heat, constant sunlight, and a lack of water – are all being experienced by plants out in the world right now… and of course, if plants are in trouble, so are we.
“Those impacts go beyond our food,” says molecular biochemist Katayoon Dehesh from UCR.
“Plants clean our air by sequestering carbon dioxide, offer us shade, and provide habitat for numerous animals. The benefits of boosting their survival are exponential.”
The research has been published in Science Advances.
Biologists May Have Solved a 30-Year-Old Mystery on Why Touch Stresses Plants Out
Scientists have long known that touching plants can set off a stress reaction in them – but until now it hasn’t been exactly clear how that worked at a molecular level, something that a new study hopes to shed light on.
The researchers behind the study have identified certain genetic keys inside plants that lead to two separate signaling pathways, explaining why plants react so strongly to being touched.
Understanding more about how this process works at a fundamental level could help researchers in a variety of different areas, from improving plant health to getting higher harvest yields from the same crop.
“We exposed the plant thale cress to soft brushing, after which thousands of genes were activated and stress hormones were released,” says biologist Olivier Van Aken from Lund University in Sweden.
“We then used genetic screening to find the genes that were responsible for this process.”
The genetic screening searched for mutant forms of the plant, ones known to respond in various ways to repeated physical touches. Past research on their anatomy, especially their roots, indicated special protein channels responded to distortions in the cell membranes by facilitating chemical signals.
Less was known about how this process worked in other parts of the plant, such as their leaves. There were hints compounds like jasmonic acid played a critical role in transforming those early chemical signals into behavioral or growth changes, but there were also plenty of gaps that needed to be filled in.
The researchers spotted six individual genes that played a role in touch response, three for the signaling pathway related to jasmonic acid, and three on a separate signaling pathway.
That gives biologists a lot more to work with when it comes to understanding how and why this response happens and gets us further towards potentially manipulating it in the future.
“Our results solve a scientific mystery that has eluded the world’s molecular biologists for 30 years,” says biologist Essam Darwish from Lund University.
“We have identified a completely new signaling pathway that controls a plant’s response to physical contact and touch. Now the search for more paths continues.”
From knife cuts to animal bites to torrents of rain, every touch that a plant gets leads to a defensive molecular response – although these responses can be quite varied. They can lead to plants becoming more stress-resistant and flowering later in the year, for example.
The idea to try and harness this response isn’t new: scientists are already looking into how carefully managed “mechanical wounding” can make for sturdier crops and harvests that are more plentiful, because the plants build up more of a resistance to stress.
As climate change puts even more pressure on agriculture and wheat production, those processes are becoming even more important – and this latest piece of research gives scientists vital information about how this is all controlled.
“Given the extreme weather conditions and pathogen infections that climate change leads to, it is of utmost importance to find new ecologically responsible ways to improve crop productivity and resistance,” says Van Aken.
The research has been published in Science Advances.