Eleni Stavrinidou (Linköping Uni.): "Plant bioelectronics for decoding and stimulating plant signalling"

Eleni Stavrinidou is Senior Associate Professor of Bioengineering and leader of the Electronic Plants group at Linköping University. She received a PhD in Microelectronics from EMSE (France) in 2014. She then did her postdoctoral training at Linköping University (Sweden) during which she was awarded a Marie Curie fellowship. In 2017 Stavrinidou became Assistant Professor at Linköping University and established the Electronic Plants group. In 2020 she became Associate Professor and Docent in Applied Physics. She received several grants including the Future Research Leaders grant of the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research and the ERC-Staring Grant. Stavrinidou is recipient of the L’ORÉAL-UNESCO For Women in Science prize in Sweden (2019) and the Tage Erlander Prize for Natural Sciences and Technology from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2023).  Her research interests focus on plant bioelectronics and plant-based biohybrid living materials and devices.

Abstract: The climate change and growing population calls for plants with increased tolerance to biotic and abiotic stress and plants with higher productivity. In my talk I will present our recent advancements on interfacing bioelectronic tools with model plant systems with the aim to overcome limitations of conventional methods used in plant science but also enable new possibilities for plant interface. Electrical signals in plants are mediators of long-distance signalling and correlate with plant movements and responses to stress. These signals are studied with single surface electrodes that cannot resolve signal propagation and integration, thus impeding their decoding and link to function. We developed conformable multielectrode arrays based on organic electronics for large-scale and high-resolution plant electrophysiology. This technology enabled us to performed precise spatiotemporal mapping of the action potential in Venus flytrap, a model system for fast electrical signalling. Our work revealed key properties of the AP and establishes the capacity of organic bioelectronics for resolving electrical signalling in plants contributing to the mechanistic understanding of long-distance responses in plants. Apart from monitoring electrical signals we also used electric field to stimulate plants. We developed a bioelectronic platform that stimulates the growth of plants in hydroponics culture. We demonstrated that Barley, one of the most important crops, grows well within the bioelectronic platform and when stimulated, the biomass increased by 50%. Our work opens the pathway for enhancing plant growth using bioelectronics, in hydroponics setting, that may result in more sustainable food production.