The research team created a magical plant that glows when stressed.
A team of researchers at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University has managed to genetically engineer potato plants to create species that glow when stressed.
Plants have no way of communicating their “feelings” . But today, one of the biggest challenges of modern industry is finding ways to respond to factors that cause disease and stress to plants before it is too late.
New research by scientists is opening up hope of overcoming this major problem with help from advanced genetic engineering.
A group of researchers led by Dr. Shilo Rosenwaser has sought to genetically modify potato plants so that they can glow under a fluorescent camera when stressed due to lack of water, extreme cold or lack of sunlight. …
Researchers have achieved a feat by creating a new type of potato that can warn of stress by fluorescing in the earliest stages.
A team of scientists has introduced a new gene into the plant’s chloroplast, an organelle in photosynthetic organisms. The more stressed a plant is, the greater the amount of reactive oxygen species it produces.
In the case of genetically modified potatoes, this means it produces more fluorescent proteins and glows brighter.
Last year, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers introduced bioluminescent watercress plants, created by inserting DNA obtained from bioluminescent fungi into the plant’s DNA sequence.
