Hormesis: Highly Generalizable and Beyond Laboratory

Abstract

Hormesis is a biphasic dose-response relationship with contrasting effects of low versus high doses of stress. Hormesis is rapidly developing in plant science research and has wide implications for risk assessment, stress biology, and agriculture. Here, we explore selected areas of importance to the concept of hormesis and suggest that hormesis is a highly generalizable phenomenon. We address the questions of whether hormesis occurs in high-risk groups or in response to mixtures of stress-inducing agents, whether there is a single biological mechanism of hormesis, and what the temporal features of hormesis are.

Keywords: adaptive response; biological plasticity; conditioning; dose–response; hormesis; priming.