A group of researchers has discovered that plants can photosynthesize at a 49 percent faster rate after being injected with carbon nanotubes.
Publishing their findings in the journal Nature Medicine, Massachusetts Institute of Technology chemical engineers experimented with plants to essentially rework their inner machinery and allow them to produce energy faster, Discovery News reported.
Chloroplasts, the plant organelles that convert sunlight into a component needed to synthesize glucose, are key to the photosynthesis process. The researchers injected these organelles with single-walled carbon nanotubes, which increased the flow of electrons in the first phase of photosynthesis by as much as 49 percent.
The experiments also made the plants sensitive to various substances and enhanced their ability to repair themselves, CBC News reported.
In the future, these bionic plants could be used for light or as pollution detectors. The study revealed that "a plant can be augmented to function as a photonic chemical sensor" when the carbon nanotubes enable near-infrared fluorescence monitoring.
"Nanobionics engineering of plant function may contribute to the development of biomimetic materials for light-harvesting and biochemical detection with regenerative properties and enhanced efficiency," the researchers wrote in the study abstract.
The team doesn't yet have a hypothesis as to why the carbon nanotubes make the chloroplasts work more efficiently.
While the engineers found the most success with chloroplasts that had been taken from the plant, they also worked to deliver carbon nanotubes to organelles in living plants, which resulted in 30 percent more efficiency than normal.
Using a process called lipid exchange envelope penetration, the researchers "applied the nanotubes to the underside of the leaf via a watery solution that is absorbed through tiny pores called stomata," according to Discovery News.
When coated with negatively charged DNA, the carbon nanotubes transferred to the chloroplasts in the living plants.
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