Plant Nanobionics or ePlants aim to turn plants into sensors detecting explosives, warn of pollutants and environmental conditions such as drought

Plant Nanobionics seeks to use  designed nanoparticles to interface directly with plant cells and organelles to augment plant functions, as well as to introduce non-native functionalities. The broader vision is to create a wide array of wild-type plants,  capable of imaging objects in their environment, self powering themselves as light sources, IR communication devices, and also function as self-powered ground water sensors.

 

Plants are uniquely suited to perform such roles due to their ability to generate energy from sunlight and photosynthesis. They are also in constant fluidic exchange with the environment, both in gaseous exchange via the stomata, as well as in their continual uptake of water and mineral salts from the ground. Furthermore, plants have a negative carbon footprint and contribute aesthetically to our living environment.

 

MIT engineers have created sensors that can be printed onto plant leaves and reveal when the plants are experiencing a water shortage. This kind of technology could not only save neglected houseplants but, more importantly, give farmers an early warning when their crops are in danger, says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and the senior author of the new study.

 

Earlier, Engineers from MIT turned spinach plants into sensors that can soak up explosive molecules from groundwater, detect their presence and then transmit that information to a handheld device. The plants were designed to detect nitroaromatics, which are often used in landmines and other explosives. When one of these chemicals is present in the groundwater sampled naturally by the plant, carbon nanotubes embedded in the plant leaves emit a fluorescent signal that can be read with an infrared camera.

 

The development from a team at MIT is said to be one of the first demonstrations of engineering electronic systems into plants, an approach dubbed plant nanobionics. “The goal of plant nanobionics is to introduce nanoparticles into the plant to give it non-native functions,” said Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and the leader of the research team.

 

Strano and Giraldo used nanoparticles to enhance plants’ photosynthesis ability and to turn them into sensors for nitric oxide, a pollutant produced by combustion. Plants are ideally suited for monitoring the environment because they already take in a lot of information from their surroundings, Strano says. “Plants are very good analytical chemists,” he says. “They have an extensive root network in the soil, are constantly sampling groundwater, and have a way to self-power the transport of that water up into the leaves.”

 

Recently, Researchers from Sweden have introduced the concept of electronic plants (e-Plants), an organic bioelectronic technology capable of forming analog and digital circuits inside the leaves and xylem vascular tissue of Rosa floribunda, respectively.

 

For example, a Swedish group recently demonstrated  how a rose from a garden may be converted into a supercapacitor. The cut rose was dipped in a polymer solution. The polymer was absorbed by the stem, leaves, and the flower, creating electrically conductive filaments within, which allowed a large amount of charge to be transferred to the flower. Team member Eleni Stavrinidou reported, “We have been able to charge the rose repeatedly, hundreds of times without any loss on the performance of the device. The levels of energy storage we have achieved are of the same order of magnitude as those in supercapacitors.”

 

One of the goals of Synthetic Biology  is the creation of bioengineered microorganisms (and possibly other life forms) that can produce pharmaceuticals, detect toxic chemicals, break down pollutants, repair defective genes, destroy cancer cells, and generate hydrogen for the post petroleum economy.