Moss Protonema and Lead

This week in Bryology Lab group I presented a scientific journal article about lead and mosses. It was a pretty interesting read. You may know that some heavy metals (ex. lead and mercury) are toxic. Think kids eating contaminated lead paint. It is bad for them and will make them sick. Well plants are the same way. If too many heavy metals get inside their cells they can damage the plant and make it sick.

One way that plants prevent heavy metals from entering their cells are by binding up the heavy metals before they make it inside. How do they do that you might ask? Well it is a pretty ingenious system. It has to do with their cell walls. Okay a little review. All cells are basically a sac (a bi-lipid membrane sac) filled with mainly water and other neat cell innards. Vertebrate animals give their cellular bodies structure with internal bones, insects have an tough exoskeleton that gives them shape, and plants have cell walls that help to keep them upright. Each of their cells is surrounded on all sides by these rigid cell walls that are connected together across the entire plant body. Without the cell walls plants would be a floppy mess.

Back to the connection with lead. The researchers determined that the moss plants, particularly at the protonema (filamentous) stage bound the lead to their cell walls so that it would not enter the cells. When placed in a lead bath they could even change the chemical composition of their cell walls to bind up (sequester) even more of the lead. This method does not keep all of the lead out of their cells but it is a good start. This phenomenon has been observed in the roots and pollen tubes of other plants. Boy plants are awesome!

Click on the citation below for a link to the paper.

Krzesłowska M., M. Lenartowska, E. J. Mellerowicz, S. Samardakiewicz and A. Woźny. 2009. Pectinous cell wall thickenings formation—A response of moss protonemata cells to lead. Environmental and Experimental Botany. 65:119-131.