Let's get some zombies, I mean, bombs! (Image from the game "Plants vs Zombies")
Dogs may loose their jobs if this actually happens! And that's because a Researcher at Colorado State University is trying to use flowers as bomb-sniffers.
Plants are uniquely suited by evolution to chemical analyze their environment, in detecting pests, for example. When plants are modified to sense TNT, for example, they react to levels one-hundredth of anything a bomb-sniffing dog could muster. It’s possible to modify the plants to drain off chlorophyll, which changes the color from green to white, when explosives are detected. The task now is to refine the process to make the color change faster and for ways for the plant to recover the chlorophyll after the detection process is over, so it can be used again.
Plants are uniquely suited by evolution to chemical analyze their environment, in detecting pests, for example. When plants are modified to sense TNT, for example, they react to levels one-hundredth of anything a bomb-sniffing dog could muster. It’s possible to modify the plants to drain off chlorophyll, which changes the color from green to white, when explosives are detected. The task now is to refine the process to make the color change faster and for ways for the plant to recover the chlorophyll after the detection process is over, so it can be used again.
~Ally
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