FRANCE: Materials scientists nonplussed by wired-up plants with color-changing leaves.Every rose has its thorn—but roses grown in a Swedish lab have transistors and electrodes too.
Researchers at Linköping University have created bionic roses by incorporating plant-compatible electronic materials into them. One of their modified roses has simple digital circuits running through its stem: another’s leaf changes colour when a voltage is applied.
The scientists want to make tools for biologists to record or regulate plant physiology—the plant equivalent of medical implants such as pacemakers. Electronic components might also be a way to engineer plants instead of manipulating their DNA, adds Magnus Berggren, a materials scientist at Linköping University who led the research, published in Science Advances.
Materials scientists say that they like Berggren’s creativity, but are not sure what to make of the experiments. “It seems cool, but I am not sure exactly what the implication is. But that is science and scientific curiosity, I guess,” says Zhenan Bao, who works with organic electronics at Stanford University in California. Christopher Bettinger, a biomedical engineer at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who develops edible and biodegradable electronic materials, calls the work “cool, fun and thought-provoking”.
