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Scientists Hack Spinach Plants To Send Email Warnings

Engineers at MIT used nanotechnology to create spinach plants that send emails when they detect explosives

By Rob Waugh for Yahoo News Image: OpenClipart-Vectors at Pixabay

The plants have been designed so the nanotubes emit a signal when they detect nitroaromatics in water – a compound often found in explosives.

The technology is not unique: it’s part of an emerging field where electronic components work within or with plants, known as ‘plant nanobionics’.

“This is a novel demonstration of how we have overcome the plant/human communication barrier,” said Professor Michael Strano, who led the research.

Researchers report title: Nitroaromatic Detection and Infrared Communication from Wild-Type Plants Using Plant Nanobionics

Whew!

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How 2020 Was the Turning Point for CRISPR

Scientists took huge strides toward using the gene-editing tool for medical treatments

By Emily Mullin for Medium Image: Arek Socha at Pixabay

The idea behind CRISPR-based medicine sounds simple: By tweaking a disease-causing gene, a disease could be treated at its source — and possibly even cured.

The other allure of gene editing for medical reasons is its permanence.

Instead of a lifetime of drugs, patients with rare and chronic diseases like muscular dystrophy or cystic fibrosis could instead get a one-time treatment that could have benefits for life.

Among other things, CRISPR was used to edit genes inside a person for the first time.

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Nutrition Study: Diets Based On Individual Genes and Gut

A new NIH precision nutrition study will give some volunteers controlled meals to learn which diets best suits their genes and gut.

By Jocelyn Kaiser for Science Magazine Photo Credit: NIDDK

As nutrition scientist Elizabeth Parks of the University of Missouri, Columbia, notes, “We all know people who lose weight easily, and others who don’t.”

Now, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) is making a major push to understand these individual differences.

Last week, the agency announced what it calls the largest study yet to probe “precision nutrition,” a $156 million, 5-year effort to examine how 10,000 Americans process foods by collecting data ranging from continuous blood glucose levels to microbes in a person’s gut.

The study “has the potential to truly transform the field of nutrition science,” generating new tools, methods, and “a wealth of data to fuel discovery science for years to come,” Griffin Rodgers, director of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), said last year.

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