growers know
Too much of anything is, of course, not always a good
thing. An abundance of MeJa within a plant can be
detrimental to its proper development as well as that
of its neighbors, acting as a growth inhibitor or restric-
tor. Plants exhibiting stress in the form of yellowing
of leaves may in fact have levels of MeJa four times
higher than that of a plant of the same species that has
healthy, green foliage.
METHYL JASMONATE
& CANCER CELLS IN HUMANS
The importance of MeJa as a defensive compound
goes beyond the world of plants. It has been
researched widely for many years as a viable
treatment for cancer in humans. Success has been
shown with the mitigation, suppression, metastasis,
or otherwise inhibition of cancer cell growth in
the treatments of prostate cancer, breast cancer,
melanomas, and leukemia. It does this without the
unwanted side effect of affecting normal human
lymphocytes. These studies are fairly recent and
many of them have been performed only on mice, but
the plant stress hormone MeJa may yet prove to be
part of an entirely new class of anti-cancer drugs.
118
grow cycle
Unrelated to its
defensive properties,
MeJa is a hormone
that plays a role in
several aspects of
plant development
in several stages of
a plant’s life.”