Normal plant development requires communication between cells. Plants use RNA as a way to relay messages from cell to cell. In this video of an Arabidopsis thaliana plant—a relative of mustard—RNA messages (stained orange) jump around inside a cell. When messages find tiny gated channels called plasmodesmata (stained blue) that allow them to pass, they move to another cell. The video was sped up 95X and was provided by Munenori Kitagawa, a postdoctoral researcher in Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor David Jackson’s laboratory.
Read the related story: Plants: RNA notes to self
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Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
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