Life is full of stress.
And we all have different ways of dealing with it.
And we all have different tolerances for it.
But what about other organisms like plants and animals?
How did they handle stress?
Today, in collaboration with Merck KGaA Darmstadt, Germany
and their #alwayscurious initiative,
I want to talk about stress tolerance in plants.
Merck KGaA just released their 2018 curiosity report.
And my favorite finding is that of all the industries polled,
scientists ranked as the most curious.
Now, this came as no surprise to me
as I find us all to be a very curious bunch.
But I was interested in what parameters they measured.
One of them was stress tolerance defined as "the willingness
to embrace new and uncertain situations at work."
Considering how uncertain science can be
and how if we're doing it right, we're
always right at the edge of something new--
it made sense to me that stress tolerance is a quality
that scientists demonstrate.
Now, humans have come up with lots of different ways
to try and relax and destress.
And I have tried many of them.
But I wondered what would happen if I looked
to the rest of the tree of life for their destressing
techniques.
Might other organisms have new suggestions that I could try.
A 2002 article on the different ways
that plants and animals manage stress suggested three
potential coping mechanisms--
behavior, resistance, and recovery.
Organisms can use their behavior to try and evade or reduce
stress.
They can try and instead become more resistant or tolerant
to that stress.
Or, they can take the stress and then
recover from the aftermath.
I decided to focus on plants for my new destressing techniques.
Plants can undergo lots of different types of stresses
from things like high temperature, low water,
and excess light-- these are abiotic stresses--
to things like pathogens or other animals taking a bite out
of them.
And these are biotic stresses.
In researching this, I came across a number of plant stress
reducing strategies.
These included things like growing away
from unfavorable and stressful conditions, which
I could translate to a human response of removing yourself
from a stressful situation, as well as things like positioning
leaves in ways that could reduce damage from temperature
and water loss.
I'll call that staying hydrated and wearing
cozy layers in human terms.
But the stress response that I found
to be the most fascinating came from the humble lima bean.
When lima bean plants are infested with spider mites,
which feast on the plants leaves they
respond by producing volatile chemicals.
These chemicals in turn attract predatory mites that
eat the original spider mites.
It's like the volatile chemicals are tiny little mite
signals that encourage their rescuers to come quickly.
One of the cool things is that this effect protects not only
the original plant that was being eaten but also
surrounding neighboring plants.
A paper from 2000 showed that lima bean
leaves placed near leaves that were under attack by the spider
mite and producing these volatile chemicals turned
on five defense genes of their own.
But leaves placed next to artificially wounded leaves
did not.
Suggesting that the defense mechanism
was specific to the spider mite attack.
While I wish that I had the power
to summon a flock of predatory mites
to eat my problems every time I was stressed,
I think that instead I'm going to translate
this one into the human equivalent of inviting friends
over for a dinner party and leaning
on them for their support while they're here.
Thank you again to Merck KGaA Darmstadt, Germany
for sponsoring this video.
Stress tolerance is just one of the metrics measured
in their new 2018 Curiosity Report.
The curiosity index also focuses on openness
to other people's ideas, deprivation sensitivity,
and joyous exploration--
the joy derived from learning and seeking out new knowledge.
I bet that that last one is something
that you and I both share as we strive to learn more
about science here on YouTube.
You can click on the link in the description
below to see the 2018 Curiosity Report.
They also ranked different generations
based on their curiosity level so you
will have to click the link to find out if my generation--
the millennials-- were ranked as the most or least curious.
And as always, remember, to go forth and do science.