MUMBAI: A team of Massachusetts Institute of Technology is planning to turn plants into eco-soldiers. Plants already help control levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Now, MIT researchers plan to embed carbon nanotubes in the plant's chloroplast (where photosynthesis takes place) to produce energy that can be used to monitor environmental pollutants.
In a new Nature Materials paper, the researchers report increasing plants' ability to capture light energy by 30 % by embedding the carbon nanotubes in the chloroplast. Using another type of carbon nanotube, they also modified plants to detect the gas nitric oxide,'' said a press release put out by MIT.
Together, these represent the first steps in launching a scientific field the researchers have dubbed as ""plant nanobionics.""
""Plants are very attractive as a technology platform,"" says Michael Strano, leader of the MIT research team. ""They repair themselves, they're environmentally stable outside, they survive in harsh environments, and they provide their own power source and water distribution.""
His team thinks plants can be turned into self-powered, photonic devices such as detectors for explosives or chemical weapons. They also plan to enhance the photosynthetic function of chloroplasts isolated from plants, for possible use in solar cells.
By adapting the sensors to different targets, the researchers hope to develop plants that could be used to monitor environmental pollution, pesticides, fungal infections, or exposure to bacterial toxins.
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