Engineering plants for fun and profit – and bettering our future
Time was, genetic engineers were putting jellyfish genes in everything to see what crazy animals they could get to glow in the dark. Now, however, they’re doing quite a bit more. The journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has a few articles on various uses for genetically modified plants. Two papers discuss using trees to remove harmful chemicals from the atmosphere, the third identifies a way to modify the Chlamy (a green alga) to produce hydrogen. It seems that algae may be the future of biofuels, after a report on using algae to produce a type of biodiesel.
(image via IRRI Images)
