


The origin of these dual activities remains unknown, but it may be that these varied signaling and biological mediating capabilities are remnants of biological responses by life either evolving or inhabiting highly sulfidic and anoxic environments of earlier times in Earth history.

Hydrogen sulfide has recently been added to nitric oxide (NO) and carbon monoxide (CO) as a newly categorized group of biologically active gases termed gasotransmitters and gasomediators. The biological effects of hydrogen sulfide (H 2S) have received increasing attention in recent years, not only as a putative kill mechanism during past mass extinctions –, but also as an important signaling molecule in both aerobic and anaerobic organisms –. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.įunding: The authors declare no competing financial interest funding was provided by the Directors Discretionary Fund from the NASA Astrobiology Institute and the funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Received: OctoAccepted: MaPublished: April 17, 2013Ĭopyright: © 2013 Dooley et al. PLoS ONE 8(4):Įditor: Suzannah Rutherford, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, United States of America Citation: Dooley FD, Nair SP, Ward PD (2013) Increased Growth and Germination Success in Plants following Hydrogen Sulfide Administration.
