Dodder, the parasitic strangleweed, was already pretty damn interesting. It can find and choose between host plants by smell for one thing. Now I find out it does bidirectional cross-species mRNA transfers.
Messenger RNA (mRNA) is a short-lived carrier mechanism that copies instructions from an organism’s DNA and takes them to a ribosome where those instructions will be used to create and chain together amino acids. Amino acids are basic building blocks of living organisms, so being able to read and write mRNA means being able to direct what gets built – for instance your body could build muscle cells, or blood cells, and in either case your mRNA would provide the patterns for the chemical factory that we call a ribosome. Dodder can literally hijack the command and control communications that govern a host plant’s growth.
The scientists who carried out this study were specifically looking for mRNA. They theorize that other sophisticated chemical communications may be going on as well. But this is pretty impressive by itself!