Researchers at MIT work to create nanobiotic plants inserting modified nanotubes into chloroplasts

According to Business Standard, a research team led by Michael Strano at MIT is working to produce plants that can sense pollution, explosives, and chemical weapons. The team might also try to incorporate electronics into plants.

The mechanisms the teams are using, such as those used to sense pollutants like nitric oxide, requires inserting modified nanotubes into functional parts of the plant, such as the chloroplast.

This image, found on Guardian Liberty Voice, illustrates how fluorescence can be seen in plants. This particular part of the experiment showed a 30% increase in the plants' ability to harvest energy from sunlight.

The first step with each new detection ability is to synthesize nanotubules with sensory ability. These tubes have a fluorescent pigment in them that changes when the target molecule (such as a pollutant) binds to the receptors.

The original article about the photonic chemical sensors in vivo and ex vivo, authored by Giraldo, was published in Nature Materials earlier this month.

This study suggests that plants may be a more reliable detector for small levels of pollutants than man-made detectors.