Table 1. The existing functional regulation of animal hormones
on plants. Plants could respond to external stimuli by animal hormones.
The dose of physiological regulation produced by the corresponding
hormone on the plant has been listed. The clinical concentration of
animal hormones is noted below the corresponding hormones based on
previous research. In some calculations, the average weight of adult and
child are considered 60 kg and 25 kg, respectively if not mentioned in
the article. Considering the proportion of water in human body, we
approximate the weight of 1kg human to 1L, so as to reflect intuitively
the safety when using these hormones in plants on animals.
Concluding Remarks and
Future Perspectives
In summary, there has been multiple regulatory effects for animal
hormones on plants. Here, we summarized existing discovery about the
effects of animal hormones on plants (Table 1) to show explored
physiological functions of animal hormones on plants.
It is well established that some allegedly animal hormones are not
unique to animals (Pasko, Sulkowska-Ziaja, Muszynska, & Zagrodzki,
2014; Hano et al., 2017). Many of them have been found naturally on
plants. These animal hormones could regulate stress resistance,
reproductive and photosynthetic systems in plant. Notably, some of them,
such as melatonin and serotonin even have been used to improve
agricultural or horticultural production and resist biotic and abiotic
stress (Jiang, & Asami, 2018; Zhang et al., 2018; Debnath et al.,
2019). Hopefully, it has great potential to see new approaches about
them appeared to meet human demands for ornamental plants and crops.
However, it is necessary to ensure the safety of animal hormones
contained in these plants to the human body. We referred to clinical
concentrations of some animal hormones (Table 1). Some animal hormones
used in plants could reach medical concentrations theoretically in
humans. This means the use of animal hormones on plants could have a
potential effect on humans through food. We should be aware of possible
health threats if we use animal hormones on plants in the future. But
the functional and regulatory mechanisms of plants in response to animal
hormones remain to be elucidated. We only draw these conclusions from
theoretical clinical data with the lack of direct evidence. More
research should be carried out to study the application of animal
hormones in agriculture. And we are looking forward to understanding the
hormonal networks systematically and the
molecular mechanism of them in
both plant and animal.