DRUGGING A PLANT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 290, 8 December 1931, Page 9

DRUGGING A PLANT.

TESTS REVEAL "BEHAVIOUR." CAN BE ANAESTHETISED. WHAT EXPERIMENTS SHOW. ■ (By a Special Correspondent.) WASHINGTON, October 31. Experiments with a "crazy plant," which shed new light on the chemical ■basis of the behaviour of living things, have been reported to the National Academy of Sciences by Prof. Wilder D. Bancroft, of Cornell University.

, The' experiments slioav that plants, as well as animals, can be anaesthetised and that both major divisions of the living world are rendered insensitive by various drugs for the same reasons and behave in approximately the same way. . Prof. Bancroft and his assistant, John E. Butzler, Jr., worked with the well-known "sensitive plant," mimosa pudica, kept ae a curiosity in many conservatories, which has an almost animal-like sensitivity to touch, its leaves folding up at the sligheet stimulation as if it were possessed of a nervous system. The experiments are a continuation of those reported by Prof. Bancroft last spring, which tended to show that the. mechanism for rendering animals insensible, as Avell as for such extreme variations in , human behaviour as the various insanities, is the thickening and thinning of the proteins of. the central nervous system. Either result can be brought about by the use of different drugs. Those that bring about one effect are antagonistic to the other, although the end of both is insensitivity, and in either case this is preceded by a period of excitement corresponding to insanity. How a "Crazy Plant" Acts. Thus a person becomes very excited just before lapsing into unconsciousness from ether, which'thickens the brain colloids. On the other hand, ether anaesthesia is difficult to produce if the drug, sodium thiocyanate, Avhich thins the brain proteins, is administered at the same time.

Now while a plant has no "brain" or nervous system, its cells contain proteins, chemically unknown, ' whose condition, under this theory must determine its behaviour. Thus the extremely alert sensitive plant, Prof. Bancroft concluded on the basis of its responses to heat and cold, must have its proteins in a state of maximum coagulation to produce irritability. It was a "crazy" plant. Normal plants don't act like animals because their proteins are not in the proper condition. If mimosa pudica were given a dose of ether to thicken its proteins still more, or a dose of sodium thiocyanate to thin them out, it would pass over into insensibility. First a potted plant was sprayed with a sodium tliioeyanate solution and then this was poured over its roots. Very quickly it became relatively insensitive. Even powerful blows failed to bring . out the folding response of the leaves iwhich before was evoked by the slighest touch. Then a small amount of ether was poured over the soil of a potted .... plant. ; ; Complete ■.: anaesthesia resulted in"four minutes, the leaves and petioles being so affected that the plant was completely folded up. Sensitivity began to return after an hour.

Preliminary Excited Stage. To show the antagonistic effect of sodium thioeyanate and ether Dr. Bancroft sprayed a plant with the former chemical, so that the leaves could not be made to close. Then ether woe poured on the soil. Only after six minutes did the ether begin to have the slightest effect, in contrast to the control plant which had folded up completely in four minutes. -The leaves of the second plant did not fold up at all. Only the stems of the leaves drooped slightly, but 17 minutes later they were all _ erect again. ,\ . Then another plant was given the same ether treatment. The leaves closed and their stems fell in two and a half minutes. This plant was also sprayed with sodium thiocyanate and in 18 minutes was recovering rapidly from its anaesthesia. , . Prof. Bancroft found one striking difference between plants and animals in that the former are much more sensitive to ether or chloroform than to sodiiim amytal, which has little anaesthetising effect. He ' found, as in animals, that plants pass through a preliminary excited stage before becoming insensitive. v The experiments, Prof. Bancroft says, provide still further proof of a theory advanced by tho French physiologist, Claude Bernard, more than 50 years ago, that anaesthesia depends upon a reversible coagulation of the proteins. Other experiments have shown that plants are sensitive to alcohol and to of temperature which produce coagulation. —(N.A.N.A.)