Buzz
While it may be rare for a spinach plant to land in your email inbox, it's not entirely out of the question.
In 2016, engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) published a study [PDF] in the journal Nature Materials, revealing how they trained spinach plants to send automated emails. The story resurfaced recently, partly due to a new article from Euronews, sparking a wave of spinach-themed humor across social media.
Though it may seem amusing, the research wasn’t just for laughs. The team embedded carbon nanotubes into spinach plants, which would glow under fluorescence when they detected nitroaromatic compounds—a key ingredient in explosives—in the soil. An infrared camera captured this fluorescence, triggering a computer linked to the camera to send an email alert to the researcher’s inbox.
While the study specifically focused on whether spinach could detect explosive materials, the broader goal is to tap into plants' innate abilities to help us collect valuable environmental data.
"Plants are exceptional analytical chemists," said Michael Strano, an MIT chemical engineering professor and lead researcher of the study, in a press release. "They possess an extensive root system in the soil, are constantly analyzing groundwater, and have a unique way of self-powering the transport of that water to the leaves."
The MIT team has also leveraged plant nanotubes to detect other substances in the soil, like sarin, a colorless, odorless nerve agent used in chemical warfare. In a study published last year, Strano and the researchers at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) implanted nanotubes into plants that monitored the plants' hydrogen peroxide levels. Plants often release hydrogen peroxide when stressed or damaged, and understanding the triggers for this release could help farmers optimize growing conditions.
In essence, spinach's newfound email skills represent something far greater: Plants are now capable of communicating with us more effectively than ever before.
