MIT scientists create plants that can glow Student satellite helps solve major space mystery
Boston: MIT scientists have found a way to induce plants to give off dim light by embedding specialised nanoparticles into their leaves, a major step towards using plants to illuminate the workspace.
This technology could also be used to provide lowintensity indoor lighting, or to transform trees into self- powered streetlights, the researchers said.
“The vision is to make a plant that will function as a desk lamp — a lamp that you don’t have to plug in. The light is ultimately powered by the energy metabolism of the plant itself,” said Michael Strano, professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT), US.
To create the glowing plants, the team turned to luciferase, the enzyme that gives fireflies their glow. Luciferase acts on a molecule called luciferin, causing it to emit light. Another molecule called co- enzyme A helps the process along by removing a reaction byproduct that can inhibit luciferase activity. The team packaged each of these three components into a different type of nanoparticle carrier.
The nanoparticles, which are all made of materials that the US Food and Drug Administration classifies as “generally regarded as New York: A 60- year- old mystery regarding the source of some energetic and potentially damaging particles in the Earth’s radiation belts has been solved, using data from a student operated shoeboxsized satellite.
The results indicate energetic electrons in Earth’s inner radiation belt - primarily near its inner edge - are created by cosmic rays born from explosions of supernovas, said Professor Xinlin Li from University of Colorado at Boulder, US.
Earth’s radiation belts, known as the Van Allen belts, are layers of energetic particles held in
safe,” help each component get to the right part of the plant. They also prevent the components from reaching concentrations that could be toxic to the plants. The researchers’ early efforts at the start of the project yielded plants place by the planet’s magnetic field. The team showed that during a process called “cosmic ray albedo neutron decay”, cosmic rays entering Earth’s atmosphere collide with neutral atoms, creating a “splash” which produces charged particles, including electrons, that become trapped by Earth’s magnetic fields.
The findings have implications for understanding and better forecasting the arrival of energetic electrons in near- Earth space, which can damage satellites and threaten the health of space- walking astronauts, said Li. that could glow for about 45 minutes, which they have since improved to 3.5 hours. The light generated by one 10- centimetre watercress seedling is currently about one- thousandth of the amount needed to read by.