• Question: Do plants have immune systems?!

    Asked by Ellz to Steph, Carmen, Laura on 18 Mar 2015. This question was also asked by blancavalero, CarlotaPlass.
    • Photo: Stephanie Dyson

      Stephanie Dyson answered on 18 Mar 2015:

      Plants do have an immune system but it is not the same as a human immune system. We have a system called adaptive immunity where the body can respond to things that it has never seen before. In plants it is in their genes so all plants can only protect against the same things that their parents could protect themselves against and so on. Quite often when a plant gets infected the only thing the cells can do that are infected is commit suicide to try and stop the virus spreading!

      Steph

    • Photo: Carmen Denman

      Carmen Denman answered on 20 Mar 2015:

      Great question! Plants have awesome immune systems, albeit very different from ours. The xylem and phloem that flows through the trees “veins’ can have anti microbial activity. It can also be that only certain parts of the tree get infected, leaves or seed pods only instead of the entire tree. Some types of fungus are commensal, so don’t want to kill the tree, just want to coexist with it.
      Cheers!
      Carmen

Comments