L-DOPA: For many years, botanists have recognized that certain plants emit distress signals when attacked by herbivorous insects such as aphids. These signals prompt neighbouring plants to secrete volatile compounds that attract other insects to the area to combat the attackers, resulting in mutual benefit. The initial plant is defended from attack, while the pest infestation is prevented from spreading.
It has become evident that some of these cries for help are transmitted underground. However, the specifics were unclear. Now, a study conducted by Emilio Guerrieri of the Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection in Turin, confirms that these underground requests for assistance involve a molecule called L-DOPA. This molecule gained fame in the 1990s after being featured in a movie called “Awakenings”.
The movie “Awakenings” is based on real-life accounts written about by Oliver Sacks, a psychiatrist from New York, in his non-fiction book of the same name. He used the L-DOPA, a precursor to various neurotransmitters such as dopamine and epinephrine, to treat people suffering from encephalitis lethargica. This illness caused catatonia, and the L-DOPA enabled the patients to briefly come out of it.
The Role of L-DOPA
By growing broad beans with aphids and wasps called Aphidius ervi hydroponically, rather than in soil, Dr. Guerrieri and his colleagues discovered the chemical that the beans use to recruit their neighbours as allies. The chemical was found to be effective in recruiting their neighbours as allies even when the beans were covered with plastic bags.
Two weeks after germinating 80 bean plants, 40 of them were infested with aphids. Three days later, the method bioassay-guided fractionation was used to test samples of the hydroponic solution taken from each plant. The primary difference that was found was the levels of L-DOPA. After this discovery, more batches of beans were grown and synthetic L-DOPA was given to half of each batch. The plants that were fed the molecule were more attractive to ervi than the ones that weren’t, and they also produced more of three chemicals that have been linked to wasp attraction.
It is interesting to note that L-DOPA has a varied role in the communication of organisms as diverse as humans and broad beans. This information can be beneficial, as what works for beans may be applicable to other plants as well. Furthermore, L-DOPA is easy and inexpensive to produce, thus it may be reasonable to incorporate it into watering systems to attract wasps and deter aphids.
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