The quantum biology of plant magnetoreception delves into the still unknown ways in which plants perceive and respond to the Earth’s magnetic field at the quantum level. Plant magnetoreception has long captivated scientists, challenging traditional notions of plant growth and development. How do plants respond to Earth's magnetic fields? What role does quantum biology play? These questions lead us to explore the intricate interaction between quantum mechanics and the life processes of plants.
The urgency to unravel the quantum biology of plant magnetoreception is underscored by several factors. First, advancements in quantum technology and experimental techniques provide unprecedented tools to peer into the quantum realm of biological systems. Second, our growing awareness of the interconnectedness of ecosystems highlights the pivotal role of plants in sustaining life on Earth. Third, as we contemplate space exploration and the potential for extraterrestrial agriculture, understanding how plants sense and respond to variability in external magnetic fields becomes crucial. In sum, the study of plant magnetoreception has tangible implications both for advancing basic research as well as for agricultural practices, in mitigating environmental stressors, enhancing resilience in the face of climate change, and ultimately in transfer to extraterrestrial environments.
In this presentation I will briefly summarize the state of the art of quantum biology with particular reference to quantum coherence in photosynthesis, magnetic sensing mechanisms, the interplay between cryptochromes and iron-sulfur complex assembly, models and simulations as well as ongoing interdisciplinary studies.
I will also try to answer to the following key questions:
- what is(are) the primary plant magnetosensor(s)?
- how many different magnetic field sensing mechanisms are there in plants? What for?
- what are the primary magnetosensing mechanisms?
- is there an ecological significance in plant magnetoreception?
I will then focus of the next generation experiments involving dark/light-dependent reaction, the combined study of microgravity and hypo/hypermagnetic conditions and the role of reactive oxygen species in plant magnetoreception.
I will also present recent results on lettuce RNASeq analysis under combined microgravity (with an RPM) and hypomagnetic field (with a triaxial Helmholtz coils system) conditions.
As we stand at the nexus of quantum biology, plant physiology, and ecological interconnectedness, delving into this subject promises not only to deepen our understanding of the natural world but also will inspire innovative solutions for sustainable coexistence with plants on Earth and beyond.

Introduction
Spaceflight presents a stressful environment for biology. For example, plants grown in space show responses ranging from widespread changes in patterns of gene expression related to oxidative stress (e.g., Barker et al., 2020, 2023), to alterations in growth and development. Plants are important candidates for elements of future bioregenerative life support systems and so understanding how they interact with the spaceflight environment remains a critical goal.

We therefore capitalized upon NASA GeneLab’s extensive, curated repository of spaceflight ‘omics’-level data (Overbey et al., 2021) and mined this resource using a range of bioinformatics tools to search for common patterns of gene expression across multiple plant spaceflight datasets. These analyses highlighted changes such as altered cell wall composition, responses to hypoxia, altered mitochondrial function, disruption of defense pathways, and reactions to reactive oxygen species and oxidative stress.

We then focused on hypoxia and oxidative stress as two of the major plant responses to spaceflight. Hypoxia is thought to develop from the loss of buoyancy-driven convection in microgravity. Lack of convective mixing of gasses then leads to local depletion of oxygen by metabolically active tissues that is no longer readily resupplied from the atmosphere. Similarly, radiation exposure is significantly increased in the spaceflight environment and oxidative stress has been linked to plant responses to a host of environmental factors including the impact of radiation.

Results and Discussion
Ground-based analyses of the phenotypes of mutants in components of hypoxia and reactive oxygen species signaling networks allowed us to target the genes CAX2, RBOHD and AVP1 as candidates where changes in expression would be predicted to alter plant spaceflight responses. We therefore performed a series of experiments with Arabidopsis, cotton or tomato plants growing on the International Space Station where we manipulated these genes or their associated signaling pathways. Genetically engineering increased tolerance to hypoxia (through altered CAX2 expression), reducing oxidative load (knockout of RBOHD), or increasing general stress resilience (AVP1 over-expression) all led to plants that exhibited significantly reduced negative effects of growing in spaceflight. This tolerance was evident in sustained root and shoot growth along with reduced accumulation of biochemical and transcriptional markers of stress.

In combination with increasingly effective approaches to engineering plant growth hardware, these biological approaches hold great potential as countermeasures to the stresses of spaceflight. Such strategies will be essential tools to make plants a viable component of a sustainable approach to life support on future long-duration missions.