Nanoparticle-Enhanced Bionic Plants

Mar-18-14 By implanting nanomaterials inside plants, researchers may have developed a way to enhance the plants’ energy production while also enabling them to take on completely new tasks.

The researchers, a team from MIT, have reported that they have been able to increase a plant’s light-capturing ability by 30 percent by inserting carbon nanoparticles into the chloroplast—where photosynthesis takes place. The nanotubes were introduced to the plant by applying a solution of the particles to underside of the leaf, where they penetrated through the stomata pores (which allow carbon dioxide to move in and out of the plant). The nanoparticles then traveled to the chloroplast, where they improved the photosynthetic electron flow by allowing the chloroplasts to capture wavelengths of light out of the plant's normal range.

The team also demonstrated the possibility of transforming plants into chemical sensors by embedding the plant with carbon nanotubes able to detect nitric oxide, a combustion-produced pollutant. Currently, the team is working on ways to develop plants able to monitor an array of pollutants. According to the paper's lead author, Juan Pablo Giraldo, "Right now, almost no one is working in this emerging field. It's an opportunity for people from plant biology and the chemical engineering nanotechnology community to work together in an area that has a large potential."

Image: Bryce Vickmark
Imaging the fluorescence of carbon nanotubes inside leaves of an Arabidopsis plant using a single particle near infrared microscope.

More Info about this Invention:

[PHYS.ORG]
[MIT]

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