The Collective Heritage Institute, aka Bioneers, was founded in 1990, when Kenny Ausubel and Nina Simons assembled Bioneers for the first annual Bioneers conference, a gathering of scientific and social innovators who have demonstrated visionary and practical models for restoring the Earth and communities.

Bioneers was conceived to conduct programs in the conservation of biological and cultural diversity, traditional farming practices, and environmental restoration.Our vision of environment encompasses the natural landscape, cultivated landscape, biodiversity, cultural diversity, watersheds, community economics, and spirituality. Bioneers seeks to unite nature, culture and spirit in an Earth-honoring vision, and create economic models founded in social justice.

Restoration addresses the premise that "sustainability" is problematic in the context of an environment that is already depleted. As Paul Hawken has noted, sustainability is simply the midpoint between destruction and restoration. The goal of Bioneers is restoration, addressing the interdependent array of economics, jobs, ecologies, cultures, and communities.

Bioneers are biological pioneers who are working with nature to heal nature and ourselves. They have peered deep into the heart of living systems to devise strategies for restoration based on nature's own operating instructions. They come from many cultures and perspectives, and all walks of life.

Bioneers are scientists and artists, gardeners and economists, activists and public servants, architects and ecologists, farmers and journalists, priests and shamans, policymakers and citizens. They are everyday people committed to preserving and supporting the future of life on Earth. They herald a dawning Age of Restoration founded in natural principles of kinship, interdependence, cooperation, reciprocity, and community.

Uniting nature, culture, and spirit, Bioneers embody a change of heart - a spiritual connection with the living world that is grounded in social justice. Their pragmatic strategies effectively address many of our most pressing ecological and societal challenges.

Above all, Bioneers represent a culture of solutions. Their stories demonstrate that just as people have created the environmental and social problem we face, people can solve them - through a reciprocal partnership with nature. Over and over, they show how great a difference the actions of one individual can make.


http://www.bioneers.org/

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/...90105075808.htm

The large, structurally complex plants we see today evolved an elaborate vascular system to carry water and the products of photosynthesis all over the organism," says Lucas.

"A parallel communication system also had to evolve, to permit such large plants to integrate events happening in distant organs, such as sugar production in leaves, reproduction in flowers, and nutrient acquisition in roots.

"Our finding supports the hypothesis that a critical element of this communication system is the transport of RNA molecules through the plant's vascular system to those distant tissues."

The new protein was named CmPP16 because it is a phloem protein, 16 kilodaltons in size, first found in the Halloween pumpkin, Cucurbita maxima.

Another interesting feature of CmPP16 is that its genetic sequence and its behavior are very much like those of a movement protein used by viruses.

"Plant viruses appear to have acquired the ability to use plant communication pathways to infect an entire plant," Lucas says. "The parallels between viral movement proteins and CmPP16 provide the first strong evidence that viruses may have acquired that ability by stealing it from plant genes."

The gene that makes the CmPP16 protein in pumpkins is also found in a wide range of other crop plants, says Lucas, and it probably functions in the same way. The Davis researchers are now trying to backtrack through plant evolution to learn when the gene first began to assist whole-plant communication. "

Plants have peptides... so do insects...humans..animals.... and they communicate on various levels... for humans ... its mostly subconscious...we often experience it as feelings.. moods... eg as evidenced in aromatherapy... etc....




"What is chemical communication in plants? Plants rely on chemical signals to communicate with each other and themselves. Some of these chemicals are volatile (known as volatile organic compounds--VOCs) and can be released from leaves, fruits, and flowers. VOCs play various roles in plant development, survival, and gene expression.

What sends and receives these signals? Three main types of plant-to-plant signaling are known: interspecific, with plants of other species; intraspecific, with plants of the same species; and autosignaling, within the same plant, either internally or externally. For example, bean plant (Phaseolus lunatus) leaves, infested with spider mites (Tetranychus urticae) release volatiles that increase the resistance of uninfested leaves on the same plant and the expression of self-defense genes in uninfested bean plants nearby.

Plants also can communicate with insects. For example, corn, cotton, and tobacco under attack by caterpillars emit volatiles that simultaneously attract parasitic wasps to eat the caterpillars and discourage other worms and moths from laying their eggs on the plants.

What types of chemicals are used? A variety of different compounds, including fatty acid derivatives, ethylene, methyl salicylate, methyl jasmonate, and terpenes, have been implicated in plant communication. Transgenic tobacco plants engineered to be insensitive to ethylene overgrow their neighbors, while wild-type plants do not, which suggests a role for ethylene in controlling social behavior. Tobacco leaves infected with tobacco mosaic virus release methyl salicylate, which induces expression of defense genes in uninfected plants. And, transgenic Arabidopsis plants engineered to produce three times as much methyl jasmonate as wild-type plants are more resistant to fungal pathogens; the engineered plants exhibit increased expression of a defense gene that encodes an antimicrobial peptide. "

http://www.the-scientist.com/2003/7/14/20/1/