Anesthesia turns out to be effective for plants

"Anesthesia" indispensable to surgery has become clear that it also works for plants. There is a possibility to reduce animal experiments by using plants instead of animals for specimens in the study of anesthetic drugs.

Anaesthetics stop diverse plant organ movements, affect endocytic vesicle recycling and ROS homeostasis, and block action potentials in Venus flytraps | Annals of Botany | Oxford Academic
https://academic.oup.com/aob/advance-article/doi/10.1093/aob/mcx155/4722571

Something really fascinating happens when you give plants anaesthetic
http://www.sciencealert.com/turns-out-plants-susceptible-anaesthetics-humans-movement-action

Scientists Discover Plants Respond to Anesthetics - Which Could End Animal Testing
https://futurism.com/scientists-discover-plants-respond-anesthetics-end-animal-testing/

German · Bonn UniversityYonegawaWithTsuneko KasaiThinks that the plant reacts to the anesthesia as well as the animals.

In the experiment, Mimosa pudica (known for reacting when touched by hand) (Ogre), The insectivorous plant capturing fly Dionaea muscipula (Fly Trussa), It was confirmed that when anesthetic action chemicals such as diethyl ether, xenon and lidocaine with anesthetic effect are given, the reaction is dull due to anesthetic action.

Ojigisaw exposed to diethyl ether as an anesthetic is in a state where it does not react even if you touch it with a brush. In addition, the effect of anesthesia is cut off in about 7 hours, it seems that as usual Ogregis will close the leaves when touched.


Fly Trigusa loses its ability to close the leaves for 15 minutes to catch flies when exposed to diethyl ether and insectivorous plants that capture insects with cohesive hair Drosera capensis (African naga bana) Has also been confirmed to have lost the ability to bend leaves by being exposed to ether. Interestingly, since chemical substances with anesthetic action used in experiments are not similar in chemical structure, the response of plants is not coincidental.


Researchers speculate on the reason why plants stopped activity, because the process by which action potentials necessary to give plants to move are inhibited by chemical reactions due to anesthesia.

Surprisingly, I do not know well the mechanism of anesthesia used for human beings during surgery. Therefore, in the development of anesthetic medicine, an animal experiment is necessary to investigate the effect, but there is an indication that an anesthesia test may reduce the animal experiment by using a plant responding to anesthesia as a model.