Ferns being modified to clean up arsenic in soils
Isolating a gene that allows a type of fern to tolerate high levels of arsenic, Purdue University researchers hope to use the finding to create plants that can clean up soils and waters contaminated by the toxic metal.
The fern Pteris vittata can tolerate 100 to 1,000 times more arsenic than other plants. Jody Banks, a professor of botany and plant pathology, and David Salt, a professor of horticulture, uncovered what may have been an evolutionary genetic event that creates an arsenic pump of sorts in the fern.
“It actually sucks the arsenic out of the soil and puts it in the fronds,” Banks said. “It’s the only multi-cellular organism that can do this.” Fern’s evolution gives arsenic tolerance that may clean toxic land
Smaller plants better at defending against infections
The group of Detlef Weigel at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology has now tracked down a variant of the ACD6 gene, which functions as a universal weapon in the fight against predators. With it, the plants both produce much more of a chemical that is directly toxic to microbes and more signalling molecules important in immunity.
These enable mouse ear cress plants to combat a wide range of enemies, from bacteria and fungi to insects such as aphids. However, not all varieties have this variant. While it occurs throughout the area where mouse ear cress grows, from North Africa to Scandinavia, and from Central Asia to Western Europe, at any given place it is found in only about 20 percent of individuals. This already suggests that this variant might also confer some disadvantages.
“We could show that this gene makes plants resistant against pathogens, but at the same time it slows down the production of leaves and limits the size of leaves, so that these plants are always smaller than those that do not have this variant,” said Detlef Weigel. read more
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Max Planck press release
