{"id":5062,"date":"2016-11-04T11:53:51","date_gmt":"2016-11-04T15:53:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=5062"},"modified":"2016-11-04T11:53:51","modified_gmt":"2016-11-04T15:53:51","slug":"mit-scientists-create-spinach-that-can-detect-explosives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/mit-scientists-create-spinach-that-can-detect-explosives\/","title":{"rendered":"MIT scientists create spinach that can detect explosives"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_5063\" style=\"width: 649px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5063\" class=\"size-full wp-image-5063\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/MIT-Plant-Communication_0.jpg\" alt=\"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)\" width=\"639\" height=\"426\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/MIT-Plant-Communication_0.jpg 639w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/MIT-Plant-Communication_0-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 639px) 100vw, 639px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-5063\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">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. <i>(Image by Christine Daniloff\/MIT)<\/i><\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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 &#8220;nanobionics,&#8221; 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Authors:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Corresponding author:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Michael S. Strano, Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/nmat\/journal\/vaop\/ncurrent\/full\/nmat4771.html\" target=\"_blank\">Original paper<\/a> published in <em>Nature Materials<\/em> on October 31, 2016.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.mit.edu\/2016\/nanobionic-spinach-plants-detect-explosives-1031\" target=\"_blank\">Associated MIT news release.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5063,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[2700,2698,2697,2699],"class_list":["post-5062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-chemical-detection","tag-mit","tag-nanobiology","tag-plant-communication"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/MIT-Plant-Communication_0.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-1jE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5062"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5074,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5062\/revisions\/5074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}