Applications and advances of non-invasive micro-test technology in plant physiological-ecology research

Abstract

Non-invasive micro-test technology (NMT) is a selective microelectrode technique which can directly test the transport rate and three-dimensional direction of ions or molecules in and out of cells. It is of great biological significance to study the plant life activities and the relationship between plants and environment by obtaining the physiological and biological information without destroy the sample. The paper reviews the applications and advances of NMT in the research field of plant physiological ecology, focusing on the function of plant proteins, photosynthesis/respiration, nutritional metabolism, plant developmental processes, interactions between plant and microorganism, physiological resilience et al. In the research of plant stress physiology, NMT can directly analyze the balance of specific ion current transport in plants, which promotes the expression of plant resistance traits signal and thus conduce to selective breeding of fine strains of plants scientifically. In plant growth and development stages, detecting ion current could research the dynamic process of plants absorb nutrients and the internal regulation of plant growth steady-state mode at the micro-scale. NMT could provide bio-technical support for analysis of ecological tolerance mechanism of different individuals, making it possible to use the enrichment plants to soil remediation and improvement. Of course NMT still has limitations, including being incapable of comprehensive analysis of plant evolution systematically, and the inadequate applications in research on structure and function of plant physiological-ecology. Therefore the focus of future research should include closely combining the application of NMT with other analysis techniques, as well as studies of biology, ecology, environment science to gradually improve the use of NMT analysis in building dynamic continuity of plant morphology and physiological function of information technology systems.