ScienceDaily (Feb. 2, 2008) — Splash! Ooch! Yum! And so another unsuspecting insect victim of Nepenthes alata (N. alata), commonly known as the carnivorous pitcher plant, falls victim to the digestive fluids at the bottom of the plant's famous cup-shaped leaf.

For almost a century, scientists have sought the full chemical recipe for the pitcher plant's fluid. Japanese scientists now report completely deciphering this complex cocktail of digestive and antibacterial enzymes.

Unlike other plants that absorb nutrients from the soil, carnivorous plants growing in nutrient-poor soils have special organs to capture insects, digest them and absorb the nitrogen and phosphorous their environment sorely lacks. The identity of all the myriad proteins involved in this evolutionary marvel -- some of which could have beneficial applications in medicine and agriculture -- has been a mystery until now.

Tatsuro Hamada and Naoya Hatano used cutting-edge proteomic analysis to identify all of the components. They isolated and sequenced the proteins, then compared each with existing proteins to find structural matches. Hamada and Hatano detected seven proteins that exist mainly in the pitcher fluid of N. alata -- three of which can only be found in this species -- including useful enzymes that may inhibit bacterial growth and rotting as the plant slowly digests its prey.

The article "Proteome Analysis of Pitcher Fluid of the Carnivorous Plant Nepenthes alata" is scheduled for the February issue of ACS' Journal of Proteome Research.

enlarge

Scientists have deciphered the complex cocktail of digestive and antibacterial enzymes of the carnivorous pitcher plant. (Credit: Courtesy of Tatsuro Hamada, Ishikawa Prefectural University, Japan)

Related Stories

Anti-adhesive Layers Leave No Hope For Insects (Jan. 17, 2006) — Plants are able, using organic substances, to achieve effects that we otherwise mostly know only from technical materials. One example of this is the carnivorous pitcher plant, as researchers from ...  > read more

Carnivorous Plants Use Pitchers Of 'Slimy Saliva' To Catch Their Prey (Nov. 24, 2007) — Carnivorous plants supplement the meager diet available from the nutrient-poor soils in which they grow by trapping and digesting insects and other small arthropods. Pitcher plants of the genus ...  > read more

Predicting Species Abundance In The Face Of Habitat Loss (Sep. 28, 2006) — Manipulating habitat volume and the presence of top trophic levels of an aquatic community reveals that trophic structure can determine species abundance despite habitat loss, according to a study ...  > read more

World's First 'Self-Watering' Desert Plant: Desert Rhubarb (July 5, 2009) — Researchers have managed to make out the "self-irrigating" mechanism of the desert rhubarb, which enables it to harvest 16 times the amount of water than otherwise expected for a plant in this region ...  > read more

Search ScienceDaily

Better at Bat