1959. Heads They Win, Tails We Lose: On Iran Nuclear Agreement

By Kamran Nayeri, August 2, 2015

This was a nuclear industry advertisement with the slogan: "Nuclear Energy, Today's Answer." 

There has been much written about the Iran nuclear agreement signed in Vienna on July 14. Everything I have read, and I have read many from all sides, is mostly from an “international relations” perspective; their analysis focuses on which states will be winners or losers and how power relations among states may change in the Middle East if  the agreement is ratified in the U.S. and in Iran (Security Council has already ratified it). Further, the negotiating parties have stated that the agreement makes the Middle East and the world safer.  That is far from the truth. 

Nuclear technology for energy or for weapons is inherently and extremely dangerous to people and the planet as the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in March 2011 and American atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 have clearly shown.  The progress toward a healthier, safer and better world requires elimination of all nuclear weapons and nuclear power.  While it is true that this agreement if adhered to may postpone military confrontation between U.S. and its allies and Iran, it is not true that working people in Iran, United States and elsewhere are safer and should lend their support to it. In fact, none of the participating governments in the negotiations represent the best interest of their people or the planet. 

To understand the nuclear agreement reached between the UN Security Council permanent members and Germany (5+1) and Iran we must recall who the negotiating parties represented and how the agreement was reached.

The Nuclear Club

According to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute there are nine countries in the world today with nuclear weapons. In order of the year of first nuclear test and number of their current weapons they are: United States (1945, currently has 7,260 nuclear weapons), Russia (1949, 7,500), United Kingdom (1952, 215), France (1960, 300), China (1964, 260), India (1974, 90-110), Pakistan (1998, 100-120), Israel (no firm date available, 80), and North Korea (2006, 6-8).   Furthermore, the top four members of the Nuclear Club have thousands of these weapons deployed for use: U. S. (2,080 deployed weapons), Russia (1,780), U. K.  (150) and France (290).  Needless to say, even if a small fraction of these weapons are used the entire world will be annihilated. 

Israel’s nuclear program is important in considering Iranian nuclear ambitions given the threat Israel has posed to the region. At a colonial-settler expansionist Jewish State at perpetual war with the indigenous peoples of the Middle East, it long has possessed nuclear weapons.  Yet, like its policy of colonialism and war it has never been held accountable by the Security Council and the United States for its refusal to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or for its nuclear weapons. 

According to the Federation of American Scientists, Israel began pursuit of nuclear weapons right after its establishment in 1948. It began search for uranium in 1949 and Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) was founded in 1952. On October 3, 1957, France and Israel signed an agreement to build a 24 MWt reactor (although the cooling systems and waste facilities were designed to handle three times that power) and, in protocols that were not committed to paper, a chemical reprocessing plant. This complex was constructed in secret, and outside the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection regime.  In 1968, the CIA issued a report about Israel’s successful production of nuclear weapons. Although United States was aware of Israel’s nuclear ambitions and activities it turned a blind eye allowing its strategic ally in the Middle East to join the Nuclear Club outside the purview of the IAEA.

Advantages of membership in the Nuclear Club

Of course, there is significant advantage in belonging to the Nuclear Club and a disadvantage not to belonging to it.  For instance, in her 2008 bid to become the Democratic Party presidential candidate in 2008 Hillary Clinton threatened Iran with nuclear obliteration (The Guardian, April 22, 2008). Such dangerously bellicose demagogy was possible because the U.S. has nuclear weapons and Iran does not.  International relations in the capitalist world are power relations in which military might matters and possession of nuclear weapons offer a definite edge as the history of nuclear weapons proliferation shows.

United States developed the first atomic weapons during World War II with cooperation from the United Kingdom and Canada as part of the Manhattan Project. It tested the first nuclear weapon in 1945 (“Trinity”).   The U. S. then used atomic bombs against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing and wounding an estimated 150,000  and 75,000 respectively.  In 1952, the U.S. tested the first hydrogen bomb ("Ivy Mike") and a deployable weapon in 1954 ("Castle Bravo").  Using nuclear weapons in Japan has been “defended” as a decision to end the war quickly.  However, it is also a fact that United States used its possession of nuclear weapons as a strategic edge against the Soviet Union in the Cold War which initiated the nuclear arms race. 

Those in the Nuclear Club have a strong incentive to bar other states from obtaining nuclear arms: the fewer states in the Nuclear Club the more non-nuclear states who are militarily at gross disadvantage.  Thus, South Africa after apartheid as well as former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan were persuaded to give up their nuclear weapons. 

Thus, the 5+1 negotiators with Iran were not working to make the world safer from nuclear weapons but to maintain their own nuclear edge, in particular the nuclear edge of the colonial-settler Zionist regime in the Middle East.  In fact, the United States is currently undertaking a three-decade one trillion dollar program to update its nuclear arsenal. (William J. Broad and David E. Sanger, “U.S. Ramping Up Major Renewal in Nuclear Arms,” The New York Times, September 21, 2014)  The raucous debate between the Israeli government and its Republican and Democratic backers and the Obama administration is in large part about the best way to ensure Israeli’s nuclear edge in the Middle East and to contain Islamic Republic’s influence in the region.  Of course, it is also about the U.S.'s own strategic interests. 

The Iranian revolution of 1979

To understand what and who the Islamic Republic represents it is necessary to recall the Iranian revolution of February 1979, what it represented and what happened to it.  The Iranian revolution was the largest urban mass uprising since the 1917 Russian revolution. It changed that strategic relation of forces in the Middle East to the detriment of imperialism. In 1953, the Shah’s regime had been imposed by the CIA coup that overthrew the democratically elected nationalist government of Mohammad Mossadegh. The revolution overthrew imperialism’s regional gendarme, an ally of the colonial-settler state of Israel, and a supporter of South African Apartheid. It dissolved the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), a regional anti-Soviet military pact.

No political party or individual led the February insurrection that overthrow the Shah’s regime. In the year leading up to it grassroots organizations took shape in the neighborhoods, workplaces, high schools and universities, and among peasants and oppressed nationalities, and eventually in the armed forces, posing a challenge to the Shah’s power structure. Workers began to exert control over workplaces. Peasant moved to take the land they had tiled for centuries; closely tied to this oppressed nationalities began to revive their cultural heritage and exercise regional autonomy in Kurdistan and Turkmen Sahra. Universities became centers of political discourse. Neighborhoods were organized through popular committees to distribute scarce fuel and food. Political parties, including the banned socialist groups, began to function increasingly openly. Oil workers staged a nationwide strike that paralyzed the regime. Finally, as the discipline in the armed forces began to crumble and the Royal Guard attacked Homafaran’s (an officers rank in Shah’s air force) barracks who had gone to the side of the revolution in Tehran, the population armed itself and overthrew the monarchy in three days of insurrections across the country.

It was entirely possible for Iranians to inaugurate the first workers and peasant government in the Middle East and open the road to socialism. Instead Ayatollah Khomeini, who had opposed the Shah’s capitalist modernist reforms in 1963, including woman suffrage, and was subsequently arrested and exiled to Iraq, captured the moment and established himself as the spokesperson for the revolution. By 1983, Khomeini had used populist demagogy and ruthless repression to suppress all independent mass organizations and practically all political parties to consolidate a theocratic capitalist Islamic Republic regime. Thus, the Islamic Republic offers a historically reactionary response to imperialism in Iran and in the Middle East. (For an outline of this history see Nayeri and Nasab, “The Rise and Fall of the 1979 Iranian Revolution:  Its Lessons for Today,” 2006)

Islamic Republic’s nuclear ambitions

The Shah’s regime was among more than a dozen states that have attempted to join the Nuclear Club but gave it up for various reasons. (See, Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, 2011, Figure 5-22).” 

The Iranian nuclear program began as part of President Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program launched in 1953.  The first three reactors built under this program were for its close allies in the region: Israel, Iran and Pakistan. As part of its domestic and regional ambitions the Islamic Republic continued Shah’s nuclear program. It currently possesses several research sites, two uranium mines, a research reactor, and uranium processing facilities that include three known uranium enrichment plants. Also, Iran's first nuclear power plant that was started by the Shah’s regime in the 1970s, Bushehr I reactor, was completed with major assistance of Russian government agency Rosatom and officially opened in September 2011. Iran has announced that it is working on a new 360 MW nuclear power plant to be located in Darkhovin. Islamic Republic has also indicated that it will seek more medium-sized nuclear power plants and uranium mines in the future. 

American and Western claim that the Islamic Republic has been pursuing building a nuclear weapons has never been built on facts.  Iran has signed treaties repudiating the possession of weapons of mass destruction including the Biological Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).  Even the 2007 U. S. National Intelligence Estimate assessed that Iran had ended all "nuclear weapon design and weaponization work" in 2003.  In 2012, U.S. intelligence agencies reported that Iran was pursuing research that could enable it to produce nuclear weapons, but was not attempting to do so.  Thus, the nuclear sanctions regime impose on Iran should be seen as part of the long campaign to overthrow the Islamic Republic that began in 1979 to impose a regime friendly to the West.  

For its own domestic and regional interests, the Israeli regime has declared the Iranian nuclear program an “existential threat” and together with the Bush administration demanded that it should be dismantled entirely.   Realizing that the Iranian scientists and engineers have already mastered the entire nuclear cycle and that a military option to eradicate the Islamic Republic nuclear program was not feasible and risked wider war in the Middle East, Obama administration intensified the sanctions regime while opening up negotiations with the Islamic Republic.  According to the U.S. State Department: 

“Acting both through the United Nations Security Council and regional or national authorities, the United States, the member states of the European Union, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Canada, Australia, Norway, Switzerland, and others have put in place a strong, inter-locking matrix of sanctions measures relating to Iran's nuclear, missile, energy, shipping, transportation, and financial sectors.”  

The social and economic effects of sanctions have been severe. Even the war mongering George W. Bush’s ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, described the EU sanctions, in particular, as "tough, even brutal.” Impact of the recent sanctions have been particularly harsh for ordinary Iranians as the rial was devalued by more than 80% placing many imported products including some food items and domestically made products with imported materials or parts outside the reach of most consumers. Inflation and unemployment skyrocketed, stagflation set in. Although medicine and medical equipments are not sanctioned, they have become hard to obtain resulting in much suffering and some death. 

The July 14 agreement between 5+1 and the Islamic Republic reflects the balance of power between Iran and imperialism, headed by the United States.  America’s pyrrhic victory in the Gulf wars and subsequent rise and unravelling of the Arab Spring have resulted in region-wide instability where extremist Islamic organizations like Al-Quada and Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) that routinely use terror have gained grounds.  Meanwhile, the influence of the Islamic Republic has increased in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Gaza Strip.  The Islamic Republic has been an ascending force in the region whose interests has coincided with those of the U.S. when Washington invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq and now that both regimes are engaged in the fight against ISIS.  At the same time, a majority in the Islamic Republic regime realize that their immediate interest to dismantle the sanctions regime and pursue economic development as well as their strategic regional ambitions are best served in reaching an understanding with the United States.  Thus, the Iran nuclear agreement is a win-win for American imperialism and its allies and the clerical capitalist Islamic Republic.  However, it would be a mistake to suppose that the agreement will stop future wars—conflicts can arise over implementation and the balance of power can change in the future making Iran again vulnerable.  Nor would the agreement make the Middle East and the world safer from nuclear “accidents” or nuclear wars.

For a nuclear free Middle East, for a nuclear free world

Most Iranians welcomed the new of the agreement and some celebrated it in the streets.  They are relieved that the threat of an American attack is lessened for the foreseeable future and hope that gradual easing of the sanctions regime will improve their daily lives. They also welcome the prospects of a better relations with the West.  The fact that Iranian scientists and engineers have mastered the nuclear cycle is a source of national pride.  The Iranian socialist groups and the incipient environmentalist movement have been silent about the dangers posed by the Islamic Republic nuclear program while also opposing imperialist threats, sanctions and attempts to impinge upon Iranian sovereignty. There has been little discussion about, let alone making demands for, a transition to clean renewable energy instead of relaying on fossil fuels and nuclear power in Iran.* 

These are in part due to the defeat of the 1979 revolution at the hands of the Islamic Republic regime that has resulted in mass demoralization of the older generation and mass disorientation of the generation that followed.  Still, Iranian working people are relatively in better position to chart a road forward than all other countries of the Middle East, save perhaps Turkey.  This too is due to the relatively further economic and social development and the potential of learning the lessons of the 1979 revolution when power resided in the hands of the working people, albeit for a short time.  Remembering these lessons are important not only for the working people of Iran but also throughout the region.  Had the Egyptian revolutionaries learned the lessons of the rise and fall of the Iranian revolution it would have been unlikely that Mubarakism could have returned to Egypt with a coup. The Iranian revolution affirmed that society and economy function because of us the working people and can be changed to serve the wellbeing of humanity and the planet if we self-organize to wield it ourselves directly.  In fact, during the revolution grassroots movements began to tackle problems that required solutions that required transcending capitalism before they were crushed by the Islamic Republic. However, the nuclear issue was not part of our discussions then. The revival of the Shah’s nuclear program by the Islamic Republic and the planetary crisis make it imperative to add to our demands:  “For a Nuclear Free Iran!; For a Nuclear Free Middle East!; For a Nuclear Free World!”

* Postscript: Mihan (Motherland), a Farsi language bimonthly e-magazine published abroad, devoted its July-August issue to "The Experience of the Nuclear File: Industry, Negotiations, Conclusion." Of the eighteen contributors only one, Isa Saharkhiz, an Islamic Republic reformer, notes as an aside dangers posed by the nuclear industry and the need for Iran to move to clean renewables. Only one, Farzaneh Roostaee, another reformist journalist, took notice of the hypocrisy of the U.S. and its allies who claim to be working towards nuclear non-proliferation. The contributors mostly ranged in their political perspectives from Islamic Republic reformists to reformist socialists.  For a sample of non-reformist socialist views  see the statement of the Communist Party of Iran and the statement of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran. Both argue that the agreement represents a defeat for the Islamic Republic, neither make criticize it for its continuation Shah's nuclear program as intently hazardous to people and the environment. KN. August 4, 2014. 

References:
Broad, William J. and David E. Sanger. "U.S. Rampin Up Major Renewal in Nuclear Weapons," The New York Times, September 21, 2014. 
MacAskill, Ewen. "'Obliteration' Threat to Iran in Case of Nuclear Attack," The Guardian, April 22, 2008.
Mihan. "The Experience of the Nuclear File: Industry, Negotiation, Conclusion." July 2015.
Nayeri, Kamran and Alireza Nasab. "The Rise and Fall of the 1979 Iranian Revolution: Its Lessons for Today," April, 2006. 
Pinker, Steven. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Penguin Books, 2011. 

1958. Cuba’s Medical Breakthroughs Have Caught U.S. Attention

By Paul Guzzo, The Tampa Tribute, August 1, 2015

Cuban biotech researchers work in a clinic in Havana. Photo: MEDDIC

TAMPA — As relations with Cuba improve, many people in Tampa are hoping for easier access to one export item the island nation has made famous — premium cigars.

But there’s far more at stake with another product developed in Cuba — a treatment for lung cancer, the disease most commonly caused by tobacco smoking.

The H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in Tampa is one American institution that has expressed interest in the Cuban drug CimaVax, recently sending representatives to the island nation.

In addition, an unnamed Tampa medical center is said to be interested in bringing doctors here from Cuba. And local cancer survivors and their families are traveling to Cuba to learn more from their counterparts there.

“As the doors open wider between our countries, there will be other medical benefits,” said Candace Johnson, CEO of Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, which is seeking FDA approval to run a clinical trial on CimaVax.

Evaluations could begin within six months. In the coming years, Roswell may test other Cuban pharmaceuticals.

“I am optimistic that a field like health can open the way for real positive relations between these two countries,” said Gail Reed, founder of the Oakland, California-based nonprofit Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba, MEDICC.

It may sound improbable that a nation isolated for decades by the U.S. embargo, a land of old cars and crumbling ruins in the minds of many Americans, might have scored such a sought-after medical breakthrough. Lung cancer is the leading cause of death from cancer in the U.S., according to the National Cancer Institute, and women are dying from the disease in rising numbers even as cigarette smoking declines.

But in Cuba, the field of medicine belies that Third World image.

The United Nations reports that Cuba’s infant mortality rate is less than five deaths per 1,000 births compared to six in the U.S. Cubans also have the same life expectancy as people in the U.S. — 79 years, according to the U.N. report.

What’s more, Cuba trains almost seven doctors for every 1,000 citizens compared with just under three in the U.S., the World Health Organization reports.

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Those medical professionals have become one of Cuba’s most sought-after exports. The Cuban government says it has sent nearly 40,000 health care workers to work temporarily in 77 countries — most recently, helping treat Ebola patients in West Africa — and generated $8 billion a year in foreign exchange.

One of Cuba’s biggest health care partners is Venezuela, which provides much-needed oil in return.

Bringing Cuban doctors to Florida to study and practice on a temporary basis was the subject of a recent meeting at a Tampa medical center, said Jonathan Edelheit, CEO of the nonprofit Medical Tourism Association in Palm Beach Gardens, which advocates for international health care options.

“I can’t say more right now,” Edelheit told the Tribune. “But there were some stakeholders from Tampa’s government at the meetings.”

Representatives from Moffitt Cancer Center were part of a Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce trip to Cuba in May and toured its National Institute of Oncology and Radiology in Havana.

Moffitt Vice President David de La Parte had little to say about the prospects of working with the institute.

“Similar to Moffitt, the cancer hospital is focused on patient care, research and education,” de La ­Parte said in an email. “That resulted in a discussion about potential opportunities down the road in the areas of training, education and collaboration. We look forward to continuing our discussions.”

Reed, who edits the ­MEDICC medical journal in Havana, said Tampa medical centers have good reason to study Cuba’s health care system.

The country has developed systems for vaccination that are among the best in the developing world, Reed said, because the communist government has made it a financial priority.

Cuba produced a vaccine for meningitis B in 1989, she said, while it took until 2014 for the U.S. to approve one.

Cuba also has a vaccine for diabetic foot ulcers, which is the reason behind some 80,000 amputations a year in the U.S., Reed said.

In Cuba, the vaccine has reduced amputations by 70 percent. It is available in 26 countries but not in the U.S.

Cuba is currently working on a vaccine for cholera, Reed said.

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Researchers in the U.S. hope Cuba’s CimaVax can also be administered as a cancer prevention, said Johnson, the Roswell Park CEO.

CimaVax targets a protein that cancer cells attract and use to multiply, Johnson said. The vaccine may work as an immunization for patients at risk of cancer.

“Cuba did a randomized trial with 4,000 late-stage lung cancer patients,” Reed said. “Standard therapy did not work for them. Those given the vaccine once a month through an injection in the arm lived twice as long as the others. And their quality of life was good. Some even went back to work.”

The vaccine has been available to Cubans since 2011. Through a delegation to Cuba led by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Roswell signed an agreement with the Center for Molecular Immunology in Havana to import CimaVax to the U.S. 

Still, in many respects, Cuba does resemble a Third World nation when it comes to the nation’s health care system.

With its struggling economy, there are shortages of basic necessities such as bandages.

“You can get a heart transplant but might have to bring your own sheets to the hospital,” said Reed.

Medical supplies are one of the commodities that U.S. citizens can legally sell to Cuba. 

Tampa, a center for the manufacture of medical devices, can capitalize on this opportunity, Chamber of Commerce President Bob Rohrlack said before his group’s trip to Cuba in May.

Cuba does not buy much from the U.S. health care industry — just $7.5 million worth since 2003, said John Kavulich, president of U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council in New York.

There are a number of reasons for this, he said.

Some U.S. companies don’t want to go through the Commerce Department licensing process, for example. And Cuba grudgingly pays in cash — the only way many U.S. companies are allowed to do business there now.

The Cuban government believes that buying U.S. health care products would signal acceptance of these U.S. trade restrictions.

What’s more, many U.S. medical products simply cost more than those from other nations, Kavulich said. “However, their doors have always been open to donations without any issues,” he said. “Thus far this year, donated products from the U.S. exceed $1.8 million.”

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Alberto Jones of Palm Coast in Flagler County is among those making the donations, gathering and delivering goods from people in the Tampa area who are working to improve relations with Cuba.

Jones’ wife was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013 and successfully treated in the U.S.

A native of Guantanamo, Jones kept his family in Cuba informed of her progress. He was shocked to learn that despite the island’s excellent record of cancer treatment, patients lack items taken for granted in the U.S. — creams for dry skin, for example, or slings for lymphedema, both brought on by treatment. Wheelchairs and prosthetics also are in short supply.

With support from Tampa donors, he and his wife have been collecting and delivering such material to Cuba.

On their first visit to Guantanamo in 2013, Jones and his wife found women waiting for them in lines that stretched across town.

“The U.S. and Cuba both have something to offer each other,” Jones said. “We need to continue building bridges between the two. It will only result in benefits for the sick.”

Jones is leading a delegation of cancer survivors, physicians and caregivers to Havana in October. 

Called “Pink to Pink,” the group will meet with Cuban counterparts to continue Jones’ push for collaborative efforts.

Among those going is Rayshana Black, who received a graduate studies degree from the University of South Florida in 2010 and was diagnosed with leukemia three years later.

Now 32 and living in Atlanta and with a clean bill of health, she founded the support group Black Girls Survive Cancer and looks forward to meeting with organizations in Cuba to see if she can take away any lessons on helping survivors.

She is also interested in learning more about how Cuban cancer centers deal with their patients.

“In the U.S. we are a little more focused on the disease than the patient,” Black said. “Sometimes we forget the patient is a human trying to survive. That makes us feel like we are the disease rather than a person.”

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Because Cuban doctors are trained to work with low-income patients in other countries, without the “bells and whistles” available in the U.S. health care system, bedside manner is stressed, said Reed.

“They do more hands-on training in community settings starting with their undergrad medical education,” Reed said. “From day one they emphasize that every physician is also their patient’s teacher.”

Cuba’s Latin American School of Medicine has educated more than 200 U.S. citizens through scholarships.

Cuba may also be open to U.S. medical tourists — those visiting another country for health care procedures.

An estimated 750,000 Americans a year travel abroad as medical tourists, said Edelheit, with Medical Tourism Association.

Among the attractions can be affordable prices and the availability of procedures not approved here, such as stem cell therapy.

Today, Cuba is an illegal destination for U.S. medical tourists. They can only travel to the island for educational, research, humanitarian, family or athletic purposes.

If and when U.S. citizens are allowed to undergo medical procedures in Cuba, Edelheit said, it could grow into a popular choice, especially for people in nearby Florida, where Tampa and Miami have ancestral links.

“If a Cuban can benefit from a U.S. drug, wonderful. And if an American can benefit from a Cuban drug, wonderful,” Reed said. “The two communities can be an example of why we should all work together.”

1957. Stressed Out Plants Send Animal-Like Signals

By The University of Adelaide, July 29, 2015

Stressed sunflowers

University of Adelaide research has shown for the first time that, despite not having a nervous system, plants use signals normally associated with animals when they encounter stress.

Published today in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers at the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology reported how plants respond to their environment with a similar combination of chemical and electrical responses to animals, but through machinery that is specific to plants.

“We’ve known for a long-time that the animal neurotransmitter GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) is produced by plants under stress, for example when they encounter drought, salinity, viruses, acidic soils or extreme temperatures,” says senior author Associate Professor Matthew Gilliham, ARC Future Fellow in the University’s School of Agriculture, Food and Wine.

“But it was not known whether GABA was a signal in plants. We’ve discovered that plants bind GABA in a similar way to animals, resulting in electrical signals that ultimately regulate plant growth when a plant is exposed to a stressful environment.”

By identifying how plants respond to GABA the researchers are optimistic that they have opened up many new possibilities for modifying how plants respond to stress.

“The major stresses agricultural crops face like pathogens and poor environmental conditions account for most yield losses around the planet – and consequently food shortages,” says co-lead author Professor Stephen Tyerman. 

“By identifying how plants use GABA as a stress signal we have a new tool to help in the global effort to breed more stress resilient crops to fight food insecurity.” 

Despite a similar function, the proteins that bind GABA and their mammalian counterparts only resemble each other in the region where they interact with the neurotransmitter – the rest of the protein looks quite different.

“This raises very interesting questions about how GABA has been recruited as a messenger in both plant and animal kingdoms,” says co-lead author Dr Sunita Ramesh. “It seems likely that this has evolved in both kingdoms separately.”

The researchers say these findings could also explain why particular plant-derived drugs used as sedatives and anti-epileptics work in humans. These drugs are able to interact with proteins in the GABA-signalling system in both plants and animals ─ suggesting that future work on other plant GABA signalling agents will also benefit the medical field.

The work also involved researchers at CSIRO Canberra, the University of Tasmania, the Gulbenkian Institute in Portugal and the University of Maryland, USA.