Slow Wave Potentials –a Propagating Electrical Signal Unique to Higher Plants - Communication in Plants: Neuronal Aspects of Plant Life - page 295

20.3
SWPs are Hydraulically-Induced Depolarizations
TheclassicwaytoinduceSWPsistobringanopenflameincontactwith
a leaf or another part of the plant (Houwinck 1935; Umrath 1959; Roblin
1985; Wildon et al. 1992; Stankovic et al. 1997; Dziubinska et al. 2001).
Flaming was considered as a model wound stimulation and an entire set of
indirect data suggested that the excitation in Mimosa and other plants was
mediated by the transpirational transport of wound substances emanating
from the burned site (Ricca 1916; Umrath 1959; Schildknecht 1984). How-
ever, heat increases gas volume and pressure in the intercellular spaces (re-
flected as an increase in leaf thickness; Malone 1992, 1996; Boari and Malone
1993) and - more importantly - transiently increases volume and pressure
in the narrow xylem conduits of the vascular bundles (Stahlberg and Cos-
grove 1997c). Therefore, flaming acts as a strong hydraulic signal that ap-
pears as a rapid increase in xylem pressure (Stahlberg and Cosgrove 1997c),
turgor pressure (Malone and Stankovic 1991), growth rate (Stahlberg and
Cosgrove 1992, 1996), and leaf and stem thickness (Boari and Malone 1993).
The idea that hydraulic signals are accompanied by an electrical depolar-
ization was clearly expressed by two independent studies in the early 1990s
(Malone and Stankovic 1991; Stahlberg and Cosgrove 1992). A hydrauli-
cally propagated signal had already been suggested to exist in flamed Mi-
mosa leaflets (Haberlandt 1890) but experimental evidence for a hydraulic
wave paralleling AP propagation did not materialize (Tinz-Fuchtmeyer and
Gradmann 1990). It was 100 years later that the exposure of the root of in-
tact pea seedlings to modest pressure steps showed the appearance and
propagation of a well-resolved transient depolarization in the pea epicotyl
(as in Fig. 20.6). This propagating electrical signal, however, was not an AP
but had the typical shape and slow-repolarization characteristics of a SWP
(Stahlberg and Cosgrove 1992, 1996, 1997a, 1997c).
The large, propagating depolarizations of a SWP are generated by the
application of positive, not negative, steps in xylem pressure (Fig. 20.2b).
Rapid axial propagation of the hydraulic signal is manifested by an almost
immediate water uptake into the apical growth zone in both pea and sun-
flower shoots (Stahlberg and Cosgrove 1992, 1995, 1996; Stankovic et al.
1997) and equally rapid changes in turgor and xylem pressure (Malone and
Stankovic 1991; Stahlberg and Cosgrove 1995). How does a pressure signal
that is almost instantly rising throughout the stem axis relate to an electric
signal that takes minutes to climb the stem? An analysis of this question in
pea epicotyls found that the induced slow wave depolarizations increased
amplitude, rate and range in proportion to the size of the applied pres-
sure steps while their lag phases were declining (Fig. 20.3; Stahlberg and
Cosgrove 1997a). Figure 20.3 explains an important point: depolarizations