Complex, non-monotonic dose-response curves with multiple maxima: Do we (ever) sample densely enough?
Abstract
We usually expect the dose-response curves of biological responses to quantifiable stimuli to be simple, either monotonic or exhibiting a single maximum or minimum. Deviations are often viewed as experimental noise.
However, detailed measurements in plant primary tissue cultures (stem pith explants of kale and tobacco) exposed to varying doses of sucrose, cytokinins (BA or kinetin) or auxins (IAA or NAA) revealed that growth and several biochemical parameters exhibit multiple reproducible, statistically significant maxima over a wide range of exogenous substance concentrations. This results in complex, nonmonotonic dose-response curves, reminiscent of previous reports of analogous observations in both metazoan and plant systems responding to diverse pharmacological treatments.
These findings suggest the existence of a hitherto neglected class of biological phenomena resulting in dose-response curves exhibiting periodic patterns of maxima and minima, whose causes remain so far uncharacterized, partly due to insufficient sampling frequency used in many studies.