MSU and U of WA Researchers find how plant survives geyser basin

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. – Researchers from Montana State University and the University of Washington believe they have discovered why a certain plant variety is able to survive the hot soil temperatures of the the park’s geyser basin.

By The Associated Press Bozeman Chronicle

The plant, called hot springs panic grass, appears to tolerate high soil temperatures because of a fungus that attaches to it and apparently lives between the plant’s cells.

More research is under way to try to determine exactly how the fungus and plant interact, said Rich Stout, an MSU plant scientist and co-author of the study, which recently appeared in the journal Science.

”As far as we know, this is the first report of heat tolerance conferred by fungal involvement,” Stout said. ”The question is why, and that’s what we’re working on now.”

Researchers studied samples of the grass from Yellowstone National Park and from Lassen Volcanic National Park in California. They also grew specimens in a laboratory with and without the fungus, called curvaluria, and then heated the soil.

What they found is that the plants with the fungus survived soil temperatures as high as 149 degrees. Plants without the fungus shriveled at 122 degrees.

More experiments showed that the plant provided thermal protection for the fungus, as well.

In fact, neither the plant nor the fungus could live without each other in Yellowstone’s hot soil, Stout said.

Researchers are still trying to understand how the plant and the fungus help each other, but they think it might start as soon as a fungal spore in the air latches onto the plant.

”We think that when they do this cellular handshake, when they recognize each other, that perhaps genes are activated in the fungus in the plant,” Stout said.

That interaction could be waking up dormant ”heat shock” genes, biological triggers that tell the plant to get ready to protect itself from high temperatures.

”It may put them on alert,” Stout said. ”So when stress comes along, it’s sort of like Boy Scouts, be prepared.”

Researchers plan to analyze the genetic codes of the plant and the fungus and try to determine which genes are ”switched on” when the two come together.

The research was funded in part by MSU’s Thermal Biology Institute http://tbi.montana.edu/ and the National Science Foundation’s Microbial Observatories Program.

Matt Kane, director of the NSF’s microbial observatories, said there is national interest in finding out more about how species, particularly tiny microbes, survive in Yellowstone’s unique habitats.

”The features within the park present such an incredible diversity of habitats for different micro-organisms,” Kane said. ”It’s really probably one of the most wonderful places to study microbial diversity in the world.”

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