Devenir une plante par des microbes : la facture microbienne du végétal
Marc André Selosse
Ectomychorhize
racine & champignon
symbiose du pin
mycorhizes
réseau intercellulaire
grandes cellules de la racine, et filaments du champignon
organe conjugant deux espèces
présents dans forêts européens, pas sous les tropiques
5% des plantes
une racine fine sont en général des mycorhizes
80% des plantes sont endomycorhize
c’est ce qui est présent dans les tropes
ex mais
filaments des champignons psont présents dans les cellules, sort de la racine et forme des spores
sol est bourré de spores de ces champignons, gloméromycètes
ex oignons de 3 mois, dans sol stérile vs sol stérile + mycorhize
organe mixteplante cède partie des sucres/vitamines
champginon cède partie de l’eau et des sels minéraux (N,P,K)
agriculture a été développée sans tenir compte de ça, même en nuyant les champignons
Aglaopython (400 millions d’années passées)
elle n’a pas de racines, fait des spores
filaments de champignons rentrent dans les cellules
cellules plein d’eau (paroi mince)
premières plantes terrestres exploraient le sol avec les champignons
Acacia, Afrique
fourmis nectarivores
ils ramènent bouts de feuilles sucrés au nid, pour nourrir larves
fourmis prêt à défendre l’arbre, ils attaquent d’autres insectes
Les acariens pour les arbres
feuilles de chène sont maisons pour les acariens
ils se nourissent de germinations de spores, champignons, en se nourissant ils nettoyent la feuille
la santé des feuilles dépend des acariens
mycorhizes ont aussi rôle protecteur
cellules bourrés de fénole (?), prémunit la racine et lui donne niveau de défense
champignon ne remonte pas dans les racines
ex Botrytis cinerea induit dans les feuilles de tabac mycorhizés avec Glomus maegarita et d’autres non mycorhizées → endommagement plus élevé dans non-mycorhizées
→ proteines qui digèrent les cellules du champignon
Comment?
Génome du champignon contient milliers de gènes qui codent pour des petites proteines
elles peuvent passer dans les cellules
parfois immunosuppressif, parfois immunostimulant
plantes sont différentes des animaux
cellules d’animaux sont touche-touche, pas vraiement de paroi qui les protègent
plantes: parois permettent d’isoler l’oxygène qui circule, peut héberger champignon sans nuire la cellule
ex Dichanthelium lanuginosum
champignon protège de la chaleur
La plante
mais
chloroplaste: lieu de la fotosynthèse, où le CO2 est transformé en sucres
mais fait partie du groupe Eucaryotes mais leur plaste sont proches des cyanobactéries
mytochondrie: partie de la cellule qui fait la respiration, utilisé la nuit
2 membranes, transforment sucres en CO2 → aussi dans le groupe des bactéries
→ le mais n’a pas une place
Lynn Margulis, Symbiosis in cell evolution (book)
Un arbre
un tronc
arbre petit: ramifié de la base → où sont ces branches quand l’arbre grandit?
Quand l’arbre est isolé, les branches restent visibles
pins importés: ils leur manquent des agents d’élagage microbactériel (?)
branches a l’ombre sont attaqué par parasites, les champignons meurent près du tronc (n’arrivent pas à rentrer), ça donne le tronc sans branches connu de la forêt
→ c’est une sculpture faite par des microbes :-)
autres sculpteurs de plantes: fourmis qui vivent sur les arbres, humains…
Corse, forêt du Fango
pas bcp d’espèces: 2: arbousiers, chènes verts
deux seuls arbres qui peuvent accueillir des mycorhizes
identifié par chercheur pdh, quel champignon/arbousier ou chène
→ 520 espèces de champignons
70% sur les deux espèces
25% sur le chène seulement
5% sur arbousier seulement
plantes reliés par le même champignon, fait des réseaux
champignons sont reliés par des plantes → réseaux
plantes sans chlorophyl, certaines parasites sur racines d’autres racines, d’autres pas, ex orchidée: qu’est-ce qu’elles mangent? Ont des champignons dans les racines
→ qui sont les champignons?
Ex Sebacina
pleins de racines d’arbres emelées dans racines de l’orchidée, pas encrées dedans!!!!
arbre nourrit le champignon, qui nourrit en partie l’orchidée
→ réseau transporte carbon, azote, fosfate!
→ plantes se nourissent des réseaux
photosynthèse de l’orchidée ne passe pas très bien
il respire plus la nuit
ex. orchidées blancs
ex Epipactis purpurata: deviennent rose quand ils ont (pas de?) chlorofyl
La Fleur
sabucus ebulus, sureau noir
on en fait des sirops
plante connus pour son odeur et volatiles qu’elle émet
ex terpène sur la plante: tue bactéries
LIVRE: Jamais Seul, Marc André Selosse
prédation/compétition en font partie, mais aussi solidartié et coopération
organisme n’existe plus (vision occidentale qu’il faut laisser tomber)
holobionte sans limites
le vivant est fait d’interactions, pas (seulement) d’organismes
vision d’un réseau est plus riche
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To the Vegetal, Intimately
Špela Petrič, Slovenia
artist working with plants
trained in biology as scientist, gave inalterable intuition about plants
after phd interested in how discourse shaped perception
trying to unpack its influence in a personal way
undermining techno-scientific centric vision
born in the city
trouble keeping plants alive
research together with algae, growing with them
been abducted by plants, they needed care
the humalga xenogenetic cycle
humalga: transspecies of human/algae
genotypes of both organisms joined together
project was received as attack on human being
fascinated by idea to give humans capacity for fotosynthesis
why so little empathy for plants? See the rabbit, not the grass….
→ Avoid violence of antropomorfilisation
see plants for new as first time
artificial meetings
Kalevi Kull, biosemiotics/biosemantics
offered framework of methodology, to think about plants in materialist way
avoid to project our desires on them
semiosis: central to all living organisms, ability to perceive common modalities (signals, chemicals, light) and ascribe them specific meaning
from perspective of the human: internal nature through biosemiotics transformed in external nature
link to culture through psychosomatics and back to external nature, ex plastic (?)
triangle can be applied to any organism
different levels of organisation
gap between human as individual and plants as open systems (no essential organs, cloning…)
art as a way to perform relationships humans/plants
Shaped by Darkness
performance
body still for 20hs while casting shadow on germinating/cress
cress was reacting to shadow, trying to grow out of it
at end of performance: imprint of her body on the cress
process of symbiosis: shadow was index signalling cress to attempt to avoid it
2nd time in Denmark, audience stayed for 2 days, focused on the cress
cress is fast growing
Phytoteratology
monsters in becoming
isolation of steroids from urine, was behaving like endocrine destructor
elude them
protocol:
grow cress on it (weed from degraded areas)
symbioses of plant & her hormones
possibility to form a new organism from any cell, not necessarily reproductive cell
where does it come from: ten years ago scientists discovered series of molecules in plants that look identical to human hormones, is a communication channel that is still open
human sex hormones influence plant growth, proofed by scientists
wish to formate this embryo
making a visceral kinship: using biotechnological protocols in artificial womb
Strange encounters
metaphyics, algae, carcinoma
Human/plants equal status
think about ourselves in terms that we normally attribute to plants!!!!
2 partners: cancer cells – chlorella (very resistant single celled algae)
→ both giants of their larger organisation types (humans/plants)
everyone ok to call chlorella a plant, but cancer was not considered to be human
cancer does have hunger, drive for emancipation
meeting took place under microscope
cancer cells ingested the algae (large round with green blob inside), cancer cells will eat anything
needs to be followed up
in 1 week time algae were flourishing, hardly any cancer cell left
The Plant Sex Consultancy
collaborative project with designers, architects
question what design can do
sex toys for plants
how to know what they want? You cannot interview them
Saraccinia, meat eating plant
Cyclamen, partnership with bee that is now extinct / bee was shake plant at certain frequency for the pollen to drop
Last project
effort to develop agriculture in North Sea, cultivate brown algae in winter
accumulate toxic nutrients
in spring and summer competed out by other species
but brown seaweed needs 2y before effect can be seen
sea doesn’t accept colonisation
at first: underwater garden
together with ocean engineers constructed uncontrollable turning structure
some organism do stick, at some point it starts sinking
at bottom of sea, structure is adapted for microbiology
Vertimus: Ten Theses on Becoming-Plant.
Michael Marder
virtual presence
1. Vertimus
we become in to what/whom
no one becomes his/herself on her own
2. working with the earth
‘vertere’, turning the land
there is no becoming without revolution
twist of becoming: we turn out of someone else, into someone else
3. process of becoming is 2-fold: being in transition to nothing / Nothing in transition to being
what would revolution to nothing look like
after seed disappears, it turns into seedling
thesis 1: all becoming is becoming plant
we become them and with them
becoming plant we come into metamorphosis
journey without fixed destination
becoming plant is phenomenon of de-individuation
thesis 2 : becoming plant is phenomenon of de-individuation
there is a ‘we’ behind every ‘I’
thesis 3: becoming plant has patterns that are reproducible, repetable, tempos, times
plants give evidence for serial becoming
we have to look at entire film of becoming of the plant
thesis 4: take metabolism seriously
metamorphosis: change of shape, transformation, structural alteration, is individual, independent of environment
metabolism: change of ethereal, associative, throw from here to there, co-becoming, not clear who was initiator and who was follower
how to metabolise into plants? Turning in time, it takes time
digestion takes time
you are what you eat
Confessions ‘on food’, eucharist: the fully grown, you grow up to level of eucharist, you stop and then digested to god
to be digested into vegetable being: flow into eternal becoming (?)
thesis 5: mimesis is dangerous: it risks colonizing other life world
cfr Aristotle
antropocentrism: power & pleasure, manipulate other for you
antropomorphic: we can turn into any other being, powers of imitation
our becoming tree, what if it extended the power into vegetal mimesis (?)
thesis 6: recover something of mimesis to get some of its vegetable features
to become a tree we must hand ourselves over to growth and decay
if we add metabolism into the mix of becoming, we can moderate mimesis
it is more urgent to rediscover to decay than to grow (in context of actual ecological crisis)
grow it letting go of mimetic range of power
mimesis can produce rhythm, transports us in alternation of the seasons
Aristotle: mimesis is implanted in humans since birth
Thesis 7: becoming plant is metamorphic abstraction and metabolic concretion
Thesis 8: 2 possible approaches to become plant
we turn into the turning
how does it turn? It can affirm difference between being and nothing or xxx
humans can become anything, so why not a plant…?
lost
QUESTIONS
- ground conversation in human plant practises
pattern of mimesis, watching what people and other beings do
interested to see the permutations
troubled by ‘mimesis as practice of domination’, while it is a yielding to the other
antropomorphism is imposition to the other
practises of initimacy that takes place is practise of yielding, the morphic work of mouvement or language does not work in one way
‘vegetalisation fo the human’, people yield to the other to allow the other to transform their practise
our relations ot others are kinesthetic, affective, happening in practise, mouvement, relation, profound work is to see that exchange happen in intimate way & willingness to be transformed by the other!!!
less hubris and more humbleness in people working with this
→ disconnect antropomorphist capacity from antropocentric
Book: Le don de rien
notion de nous donner
- temporalité: temps qui passe entre passé, présent, futur (kronos); comment intégrer les deux autres notions du temps: ma présence au présent (aikos)
think of time through figure of ‘turning’, it is not a straight line
become what we already are but are unconscious of
twists and turns of becoming plant are space & time, it is not an empty time/space
- Heraclite sentence: les êtres éveillés ils ont un monde commun, sleeping beings have different worlds
pose la question sur le type de conscience dans lequel on se trouve
of plants scientists said that they are barely conscious
- Plato, République: allegorie de la caverne, question posé: entre la croyance de ce que je vois et ce qui est réel
vegetal connotations have been overlooked
emergence of the cave is seen as traumatic operation of birth, separation
but it in Plato’s text there is mention of vegetal birth/emergence: when new plant is born from seed, it is not separated from it, keeps link to dark world of roots and appears in light