End-to-end mathematical modeling of stress communication between plants

Abstract

Molecular Communication (MC) is a fundamental communication paradigm observed in nature. A notable subtype, Odor-based Molecular Communication (OMC), offers promising potential and a wide range of applications. In this study, we investigate OMC between plants in the context of stress communication, focusing on how plants emit Biological Volatile Organic Compounds (BVOCs) to convey information about experienced stress to neighboring plants. We present an end-to-end mathematical model that captures the physical and biological processes involved in plant-to-plant stress signaling. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to model stress communication in plants from transmission to reception. The system is analyzed numerically under various scenarios using MATLAB. Using experimental data from the literature, we show that BVOC emissions under different stress conditions can be approximated through a continuous gene regulation model. This model is applied to multiple stressors and plant species to simulate emission dynamics accurately. Additionally, we examine a modulation strategy observed in plants, known as Ratio Shift Keying, which enables the encoding of information in the relative concentrations of different BVOCs. This method limits the ability of competing plants to extract the transmitted information.