What is it about?
Plants cannot move away when insects attack, so they must rapidly alert distant parts of the plant and prepare them for defense. One of the earliest responses to insect feeding is a rapid increase in calcium inside plant cells. This calcium response is generated anew in successive cells, creating a wave of calcium elevations that spreads information about damage through the plant. Our study identifies the CNGC13 calcium channel as an important component of this long-distance alarm system. When a leaf is wounded or attacked by the insect Spodoptera litura, CNGC13 helps generate calcium elevations in cells along the plant vasculature and in distant, undamaged leaves. These calcium signals help activate jasmonates, key plant defense hormones, and glucosinolate-based chemical defenses that protect the plant against insect feeding. CNGC13 also connects different damage signals produced during herbivory, allowing the plant to coordinate its response to attack. Plants lacking CNGC13 showed weaker systemic calcium responses, reduced jasmonate-based defense, and greater susceptibility to insect feeding. The study therefore shows that CNGC13 is part of a network of ion channels that enables plant cells to relay information about insect attack by generating calcium signals from cell to cell, ultimately activating defense in distant leaves.
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Why is it important?
The findings show that systemic wound signaling is not controlled by a single type of calcium channel. Previously only glutamate receptor-like channel (GLR) were known to play a major role in this response. Plants appear to use multiple ion-channel pathways to perceive different damage signals and coordinate defense responses across tissues. Identifying CNGC13 therefore provides a more complete picture of how plants rapidly communicate insect attack and prepare distant leaves for potential damage. Understanding these early defense-signaling mechanisms also has potential implications for plant protection and crop improvement. Insect pests cause major losses in agricultural productivity, and crop protection currently relies heavily on chemical insecticides. Identifying the plant’s own signaling components that activate rapid and systemic anti-herbivore defenses could provide targets for developing crops with stronger natural resistance to insect pests. In the longer term, such knowledge may contribute to breeding, biotechnology, or defense-priming approaches that enhance endogenous plant immunity and supporting sustainable pest-management strategies.
Perspectives
From my perspective, this study also makes us think about plant-insect interactions from an evolutionary point of view. Plants and insects have interacted for millions of years, with plants continuously developing ways to recognize and defend themselves against herbivores, while insects evolve strategies, including effectors, to overcome these defenses. In such a continuing evolutionary arms race, it seems unlikely that plants would depend on a single signaling pathway to communicate insect damage throughout the plant. The study highlights how plants may have evolved multiple, overlapping defense-signaling pathways during their long interaction with insect herbivores. Plants use multiple xylem and phloem localized calcium channels such as CNGC13 to build a robust systemic response to diverse damage signals. Our work also connects localized glucosinolate breakdown products (Ricca factors) with CNGC13-mediated systemic calcium signaling, bringing together chemical defense and rapid long-distance communication during insect attack.
Jyothilakshmi Vadassery
National Institute of Plant Genome Research (BRIC-NIPGR), New Delhi, India
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Ca
2+
channel CYCLIC NUCLEOTIDE GATED CHANNEL13 regulates vasculature-mediated systemic Ca
2+
and jasmonate signaling on herbivory, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, September 2026, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2612869123.
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