In all aspects, plants have proved to be man’s best friend. Incidentally, scientists have engineered plants genetically to clean up the pollutants and toxic chemicals of the environment as reported by US and British reporters.
Research scientists from the University of Washington have developed transgenic poplar trees in the laboratory conditions by introducing a gene that enables the tree to suck up from soil, most of the toxin trichloroethylene, a major ground water pollutant in the US.
This was experimentally confirmed having observed that it absorbed 91 percent of the toxin trichloroethylene from a liquid solution. Natural plants were only able to remove 3 percent of the toxin.
The genetically modified plants, grown in vials under aseptic conditions in the lab were just a few inches tall but their rate of absorption of the toxin was 100 times faster than the natural plants.
The concept falls under the broad category of phytoremediation. ‘Phytoremediation uses the plant’s natural ability to extract chemicals from water, soil, and air,” Sharon Doty, an assistant professor of forest resources at the University of Washington said. However, she also added that, phytoremediation is often being viewed as too slow for practical use and that, transgenics for phytoremediation would circumvent this problem.
Dotty’s choice of poplar was due to the reason that it is fast growing, it can grow for several years without flowering, thus can be harvested before it bears seeds.
Meanwhile, Neil Bruce, Rosamond Jackson and their colleagues at the University of York have developed a transgenic with genes from microbes to detoxify a contaminant and explosive, RDX. RDX accumulated in ground water and soil is highly toxic to livestock and other organisms and does not easily breakdown.
The biologists have discovered a bacteria that can breakdown RDX. They eventually isolated the bacterial gene responsible for the RDX breakdown and have cloned it into Arabidopsis thaliana, commonly called thale cress. Bruce and his colleagues found their plants cleaned up RDX significantly faster than regular plants. “The plants break down RDX to nontoxic metabolites - for example, nitrite - which the plant can use as a nitrogen source,” Bruce explained.
Despite these biotechnological advances, the extent of its benefits is a question because of ethical issues. With genetically engineering organisms, we are taking risk because we are oblivious of what other effects the modification may have for nature has its own ways and we may fail to predict an impending doom.
via : Reuters
