A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is working to give plants "superpowers" with the help of nanotechnology.
As they have just published in the journal Nature Materials, scientists have already increased their ability to trap light energy by up to 30% by inserting tiny carbon nanotubes into chloroplasts, the organelles where photosynthesis takes place.
Thanks to these extremely high precision implants, they have also managed to make laboratory vegetables detect a polluting gas: nitric oxide.
Normally, chloroplasts only take advantage of 10% of sunlight, but nanotubes act as artificial antennas that allow them to trap other electromagnetic waves not visible to the human eye, such as ultraviolet waves or those close to the infrared range.
The MIT experts found that the modified plant, a specimen of Arabidopsis thaliana , almost doubled its photosynthetic activity.
The team's director, Michel Strano, praises the virtues of the plants as a technological platform: “They repair themselves, survive in harsh environments and are self-sufficient in water and energy. Its potential is immense ”.
The future goal of the researchers is to implant electronic devices in these living entities and turn them, for example, into detectors for explosives or chemical weapons.
