MIT engineers have transformed spinach plants into nanobiotic sensors that can detect explosives and wirelessly relay that information to a handheld device similar to a smartphone. (Image by Christine Daniloff/MIT)
Forget bomb sniffing dogs: the next big thing in explosives detection may be in your salad. A group of MIT researchers has created a type of spinach plant that can sense certain chemical compounds and even send an alert to a handheld device similar to a smartphone. Spinach plants can acquire this superpower through a process called “nanobionics,” where nanotubes can be embedded into plant leaves to turn them into biological sensors. Researchers believe such technology can also be used to detect pollutants and predict environmental conditions like drought.
Authors:
Min Hao Wong, Juan P. Giraldo, Seon-Yeong Kwak, Volodymyr B. Koman, Rosalie Sinclair, Tedrick Thomas Salim Lew, Gili Bisker, Pingwei Liu, Michael S. Strano.
Corresponding author:
Michael S. Strano, Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
Original paper published in Nature Materials on October 31, 2016.
