Explosive-detecting, Email-sending Spinach
One of the latest technology advancements and the potential plants have to help us both.
You’ve probably received thousands of emails from a lengthy list of people and companies at this point. But have you ever received an email from a vegetable?
The question likely sounds a bit bizarre, but it’s not a fictional tale. One of the more recent emerging technologies to go viral and leave most in a state of shock is email-sending spinach. See for yourself what Twitter users had to say in their response to the news.
How does this work?
The news started spiraling around at the beginning of February 2021. However, it was back in 2016 that ample research led to engineers at MIT developing a method to transform spinach sensors capable of detecting explosive materials.
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Here’s a rather simplified outlay of how it works:
- The roots detect compounds found in explosives in groundwater
- Carbon nanotubes within the plant leaves send a signal to an infrared camera
- That camera then sends an email alert to scientists monitoring the area
So really, no, it’s not the spinach typing away the next piece of news on a laptop.
What is nanobionics?
The news went viral earlier this year as the attention-grabbing “email-sending spinach”, but a more fitting yet still impressive introduction may be one used back in 2016, that these “nanobionic spinach plants can detect explosives” (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).
Plant nanobionics is the process of giving plants new abilities, done by engineering electronic components and systems into plants. MIT professor of chemical engineering and leader of the research team Michael Strano states, “The goal of plant nanobionics is to introduce nanoparticles into the plant to give it non-native functions”.
What does this mean for the future?
There’s no denying the plant-to-human communication barrier, and this spinach experiment was described as a novel demonstration of how we have started to overcome it. Even without the engineered nanobionics, plants are smarter than we think, especially in their environmental responsiveness.
“They know that there is going to be a drought long before we do. They can detect small changes in the properties of soil and water potential. If we tap into those chemical signaling pathways, there is a wealth of information to access.” -Michael Strano
While the purpose of this experiment was to detect explosives, Strano and other scientists believe it could be used to help warn researchers about pollution and other environmental conditions. Plants are ideally situated to monitor ecological changes due to the vast amount of data they absorb from their surroundings.
Strano used nanoparticles to make plants into sensors for pollutants in the early phases of plant nanobionic research. By altering how the plants photosynthesize, he was able to have them detect nitric oxide, a pollutant caused by combustion.
Spinach also holds the key to efficiently powering fuel cells. When spinach is converted into carbon nanosheets, it can function as a catalyst to help make metal-air batteries and fuel cells more efficient.
Engineers are by no means stopping here at their discovery of spinach and plant potential. The year following their email-sending spinach development, MIT engineers even began working on making a desk lamp substitute out of a glowing watercress plant.
While you probably won’t be receiving an email from spinach anytime soon, be sure to keep an eye on MIT and other plant nanobionic engineers, as upcoming inventions may involve more greens than you’d expect.
For my marketing course, students are assigned various prompts to publish a vlog or blog every few weeks. This week’s objective was to learn about a new emerging technology trend and analyze startup opportunities in that market segment.
I learned about this new spinach technology through its viral state on Twitter back in February, and I enjoyed diving deeper to better understand just what the plant nanobionic industry may hold for us as we move forward.
#NEU #Entrepreneurship #MKTG4983
Thank you for taking the time to check out this blog, please share your applause if you learned something new!
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