Spinach was taught to send emails! How was this possible?
And it doesn't even matter that much! The system introduced by American scientists is quite simple. Through the plant's natural biology and electronic modifications, spinach is able to detect certain compounds in the soil. A mechanism in the plant's leaves is then stimulated to emit a signal that can be picked up by a nearby camera, and that camera sends the researchers a message that pops up directly in their inbox, Euronews claims.
The science that can introduce electronic elements into plants is called nanobionics, says Mashable Southeast Asia. Scientists working in this field want to make plants do different things, including sending messages to people. However, why would anyone want an email from spinach? There are very good reasons for this!
Discovery of bombs has been a priority for people since there were weapons on earth. Over time, we trained dogs and mice to do this, but much more attractive than using live animals for this task was a new idea - creating a bionic plant that could detect bombs.
As a result, researchers who created spinach to send via email "trained" it to detect nitroaromatic compounds, which are particles found in many types of explosives, Global Citizen reports.
Slabs are ideal for monitoring what is happening in the ground because they take water from the soil and react to their environment. Professor Michael Strano, who initiated the entire project, said: “Plants respond very quickly to their environment. They know that drought is coming long before we do, they can detect small changes in soil composition and the potential of water held in the ground. If we achieve this information and this way of transmitting it through chemical signals, we will find a real treasure!
When Spinach realizes that there is an explosive device on the ground, it immediately issues information about this threat. And this information is sent to authorities' email inboxes before anyone is put in harm's way. And this is extremely valuable!
This is not the first time plants have been modified to target compounds in soil. Some plants have been modified to detect certain drugs, and others have been modified to detect certain pollutants. And more compounds will probably be added to this list in the future.
Photo — Shutterstock
