From NEIL GOW
We were pleased to read ‘Soil bugs home in on roots’ (New Scientist,
Science, 4 September) which summarises some of our work. However. the article
was written without consulting us and is incorrect in a number of important
(and somewhat embarrassing) aspects.
Firstly the work referred to was done Mike Morris and Brian Reid in
my laboratory at Aberdeen University, not Dundee University as published.
The organism we work on, Phytophthora palmivora is of course a fungus, not
a bacterium. We have not suggested that the electrical current of roots
draws charged nutrients to the root surface (we are not sure where this
idea came from but earlier work in my lab suggests that this is unlikely
as far as phosphate is concerned).
Finally in the penultimate paragraph the author incorrectly states that
the spores are ‘attracted to the very parts of the root that behave as a
negative electrode’ – in apparent contradiction to the tactic behaviour
we report in our Plant, Cell & Environment paper. In fact we have since
discovered the mechanism of sensing of the electrical field and shown that
anodotactic zoospores accumulate at anodic parts of the root while cathodotactic
zoospores are attracted to the cathodic sites (such as plant wounds).
Neil Gow University of Aberdeen
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