The Green Plant as an Intelligent Organism - Communication in Plants: Neuronal Aspects of Plant Life - page 4

gravity, the growth trajectories with which each root approaches the verti-
cal can be individual (Bennett-Clerk and Ball 1951, referenced in Trewavas
2003).
The common use of statistics to obliterate individual variation leads to
assumptionsthattheresponsetosignalsisalwaysreplicable.Ifthesame
signal and response are chosen, the same genotype, the environmental
conditions are identical and the results are averaged statistically, this is
no doubt true (but then the same can be said of an IQ test for human
beings). No such simplicity of circumstance is available to an individual
wild plant, which in meeting an almost infinite variety of environmental
states must construct individual responses to improve its own fitness. No
genome could contain the information that would provide an autonomic
response to every environmental state. And even cloned individuals do not
exhibit identical responses.
However, it is not just abiotic factors that are critical. Natural selec-
tion operates on individuals and Darwin (1859) considered that there is
“a deeply seated error of considering the physical conditions of a country
as the most important for its inhabitants whereas it cannot be disputed
that the nature of other inhabitants with which each one has to compete is
generally a far more important element of success.” Considering the num-
ber of different species and individuals that co-exist, each one variable in
phenotype and characteristics, any individual plant faces complexity not
simplicity. Instead we are left only with the possibility of non-heritable
(epigenetic) means whereby optimal fitness is achieved. Plants adequately
meet the Stenhouse (1974) definition of intelligence.
1.2
Intelligent Behaviour of Single Cells
1.2.1
Molecular Networks in Single Eucaryote Cells
Cells are organized structures and vital properties result from the con-
nections between the molecular constituents of which they are composed
(Kitano 2002; Trewavas 1998). Numerous molecular connections integrate
intoahigheremergentorganizedorderthatwerecognizeasliving.Itisnow
known (1) that various steps in metabolism act like many Boolean com-
puter logic gates such as AND, OR and NOR (Bray 1995) and are termed
chemical neurons (Arkin and Ross 1994; Hjelmfelt and Ross 1992; Okamoto
et al. 1987), (2) that these chemical neurons can act as pattern-recognition
systems (Hjelmfeldt et al. 1993), (3) that proteins can act as computational
elements (Bray 1995), and (4) that protein phosphorylation using about