[HN Gopher] Anesthesia Works on Plants Too, and We Don't Know Why
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Anesthesia Works on Plants Too, and We Don't Know Why
Author : riffraff
Score : 101 points
Date : 2020-12-31 10:32 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| " Right now, anesthesia science is like physics before Einstein.
| "
|
| Not quite, the answer is due to quantum mechanical-electro-
| chemical dynamics. That we know, since cells are such constructs,
| including all derivative conglomerate entities.
|
| A better way to put it: "Right now, anesthesia science is like
| astronomy before the invention of space based telescopes."
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Doesn't seem that surprising. Receptors and transmitters are
| highly conserved across the evolutionary hierarchy. Going the
| other way, there's plenty of molecules from plants and fungi that
| affect the human nervous system.
| dnautics wrote:
| But I think the point is that a bunch of anaesthetics (like
| halocarbon anaesthetics) very much don't bind to receptor sites
| in ion channels. One running hypothesis IIRC is that they
| intercalate into the membranes and alter their membrane
| fluidity... Then underpants gnomes... Then "reduced ion channel
| activity". Iirc We know it's not something more obvious like
| "conductivity of the membrane" because that's easy to measure
| and the effect is not enough to explain the observation.
| jonplackett wrote:
| It seems strange to be so sure that it's weird when ether affects
| both plants and animals, while simultaneously not being sure how
| ether actually works.
| [deleted]
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| I know that usually when Americans are seduced by a dharmic
| religion, it's Buddhism. I however find the teachings and
| doctrines of Jainism far more in touch with how I feel about
| ethics, and I think it is relevant to this notion of plants
| potentially feeling pain.
|
| My understanding of Jainism is that one of it's ultimate goals is
| the eradication of suffering on earth. However, they take this
| radically. You cannot be violent for any reason at all (and yes,
| this has kept the number of Jains throughout history to be quite
| small). This prohibition against violence is so extreme that they
| have a word for "Kitchen Violence" which is the violence that
| they accidentally exert onto the remaining plant matter when they
| are wishing their plates after eating. At least they acknowledge
| the impossibility of truly eliminating all violence on earth (you
| must clean things), so it's a little bit of necessary violence
| but it also leads to aestheticism and a general desire to not
| waste resources.
|
| I think Jainism is the only religion in the world that has a
| belief system which is similar of that to Negative Utilitarianism
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_utilitarianism) which I
| strongly believe is that most intuitive and authentically
| ethically compassionate doctrine in our current society. Many of
| the folks who believe in negative util do so with further
| specifications that pain and pleasure (the hedonistic form) are
| one very good way of measuring this.
|
| Maybe it sounds absurd to give Anesthesia to a plant before
| cutting away at it or something, but the possibility that plants
| _feel pain_ and have something ackin to an experience of reality
| was quite concerning for people ancient and modern - and those
| who think strongly enough about it may believe in plants as
| holding some sort of ethical value (no matter how small).
|
| I hope that sometime in the far future, we may eliminate pain and
| displeasure from the universe. Jainists, Negative Utilitarians,
| Anti-natalists, and others who recognize the possible horrors
| inherit to reality (and it's negative nature e.g. it tries to
| negate you if you take no actions via entropy), would be some of
| the most ethical actors in a society where we find out that
| "Plants feel things too" or "It's possible to imagine, or
| simulate the experience of being a plant that is harmed"...
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| It looks like one of the authors referenced in the 2018 paper
| already have a follow up paper.
|
| https://academic.oup.com/aob/article-abstract/125/1/173/5611...
|
| https://www.botany.one/2020/01/anaesthetic-blocks-trap-closu...
| im3w1l wrote:
| So... what about botox and curare?
| netizen-9748 wrote:
| The pharmacological dynamics of those compounds are different
| than general anesthetics, theoretically the effect on cells
| will be different as well depending on what receptor proteins
| the plant cells express.
| manfredo wrote:
| Reading the article it looks like we do know why:
|
| > Neurons... transfer information about sensation and motion from
| peripheral parts of the body to the brain and back. By sending
| electro-chemical signals in the form of atomic ions, neurons can
| communicate great distances through the body... Most of this
| information is passed as sodium ions -- atom-sized charged
| particles that pass through channels to zap from one neuron to
| the other. Lidocaine, a local anesthetic commonly used by
| dentists, blocks these sodium channels, stopping neurons from
| sending information to each other. That's why they make your
| mouth numb, the neurons there can't send pain sensations to your
| brain. They're stopped.
|
| > ...they [Plants] do pass information from cell to cell just
| like we do, via ion channels. That's probably where lidocaine
| does its work in plants, blocking these channels and cutting off
| communication. That's why the hair cells in the Venus flytrap
| can't tell the motor cells to contract, there's no signal being
| passed between them.
|
| And ether works by blocking cell membranes in both plants and
| animals. I think there are some specifics about how organisms
| with cell walls are blocked by ether - but that's more of a
| "how?" rather than a "why?"
|
| In summary: even though plants don't have nervous systems like
| animals, their motor functions are still ultimately controlled by
| ion channels with are blocked (or their cell membranes are
| blocked, thus blocking the ion channel) by certain anesthetics.
|
| This post (of all things) seems to be rate limited:
|
| > Sorry, I'm confused. What's the difference between "how" and
| "why" here?
|
| We know the cause and effect behind why anesthesia works in
| plants: plants' motor functions are controlled by ion channels,
| and anesthetics block those ion channels. We know that Lidocaine
| blocks the sodium channels themselves, and that ether seems to
| block the entire cell membrane. The remaining unknown is how
| ether blocks the cell walls in plants.
|
| In short the answer to why anesthetics works in plants is known:
| because it blocks ion channels. Saying we don't know how
| anesthetics work in plants is sort of like saying we don't know
| how asymmetric encryption works because we still haven't solved
| whether P = NP. There exist remaining unknowns, but we do have an
| understanding of why it works.
| dnautics wrote:
| Sorry, I'm confused. What's the difference between "how" and
| "why" here?
| johnday wrote:
| When it comes to scientific discoveries, "how" and "why" are
| essentially the same question. Asking "why" usually means
| "for what purpose" -- and given that "purpose" is not
| something well defined scientifically, we tend to take it to
| mean "by what means" instead.
| girvo wrote:
| There are plenty of anaesthetics where we _don't_ have very
| good guesses as to what makes them tick, though. Halocarbon
| based ones being especially cool.
| scarmig wrote:
| > Fortunately, this work may go faster than anesthetic research
| in animals. There are fewer ethical issues surrounding plant
| research, so more studies can be done.
|
| Are there fewer ethical issues in plants than animals? Or might
| we just know less about plant sentience than we think we do?
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| The former. Suffering appears to require a nervous system. So
| in the absence of one we have no more reason to assume plant-
| suffering than bacteria-suffering, and we lay waste to
| countless billions of those without blinking.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Are there fewer ethical issues in plants than animals?_
|
| Yes. There are no ethical issues in plants. Nobody gives a
| flying ducks about individual plants wellbeing... (not the same
| as environment and plants ecosystems in general).
| tantalor wrote:
| The Sound Machine
|
| By Roald Dahl
|
| September 10, 1949
|
| _A man named Klausner invents a machine that can hear sound the
| human ear cannot hear. It reproduces the sounds on a lower pitch
| so that human beings can hear it. With this machine he hears
| roses scream as his neighbor cuts them. The next morning he hears
| a tree scream when he cuts into it with an axe. He calls his
| doctor excitedly and asks him to come over at once. The doctor
| comes and Klausner says he wants him to listen to the tree 's
| screams. He starts cutting into it with an axe and a large branch
| begins to fall. They barely get out of the way in time. He asks
| the doctor if he heard the scream but the doctor will not say
| that he did. Klausner is very upset and demands that the doctor
| paint the two gashes with iodine._
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1949/09/17/the-sound-mach...
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| Don't even need plants, anesthesia works on single-cell organisms
| too:
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221...
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