Hacking Biology  

Nanotechnology implanted into plants could turn them into supercharged energy producers or sensors for pollutants.

AMIT research team wants to make plants even more useful by augmenting them with nanomaterials that could enhance their energy production and give them completely new functions, such as checking for environmental pollutants.

The research has been published in Nature Materials.  The researchers report boosting plants’ ability to capture light energy by 30 percent, embedding carbon nanotubes in the chloroplast, the plant organelle where photosynthesis takes place.

They also modified plants to detect the gas nitric oxide, using another type of carbon nanotube.

"The potential is really endless."

Together, these represent the first steps in launching a scientific field the researchers have dubbed “plant nanobionics.”

“Plants are very attractive as a technology platform,” says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering and leader of the MIT research team. “They repair themselves, they’re environmentally stable outside, they survive in harsh environments, and they provide their own power source and water distribution.”

Strano and the paper’s lead author, postdoc and plant biologist Juan Pablo Giraldo, envision turning plants into self-powered, photonic devices such as detectors for explosives or chemical weapons. The researchers are also working on incorporating electronic devices into plants. “The potential is really endless,” Strano says.

The idea for nanobionic plants grew out of a project in Strano’s lab to build self-repairing solar cells modeled on plant cells. As a next step, the researchers wanted to try enhancing the photosynthetic function of chloroplasts isolated from plants, for possible use in solar cells.

Chloroplasts host all of the machinery needed for photosynthesis, which occurs in two stages. During the first stage, pigments such as chlorophyll absorb light, which excites electrons that flow through the thylakoid membranes of the chloroplast. The plant captures this electrical energy and uses it to power the second stage of photosynthesis — building sugars.

Chloroplasts can still perform these reactions when removed from plants, but after a few hours, they start to break down because light and oxygen damage the photosynthetic proteins. Usually plants can completely repair this kind of damage, but extracted chloroplasts can’t do it on their own.

To prolong the chloroplasts’ productivity, the researchers embedded them with cerium oxide nanoparticles, also known as nanoceria. These particles are very strong antioxidants that scavenge oxygen radicals and other highly reactive molecules produced by light and oxygen, protecting the chloroplasts from damage.

The researchers delivered nanoceria into the chloroplasts using a new technique they developed called lipid exchange envelope penetration, or LEEP. Wrapping the particles in polyacrylic acid, a highly charged molecule, allows the particles to penetrate the fatty, hydrophobic membranes that surrounds chloroplasts. In these chloroplasts, levels of damaging molecules dropped dramatically.

Using the same delivery technique, the researchers also embedded semiconducting carbon nanotubes, coated in negatively charged DNA, into the chloroplasts. Plants typically make use of only about 10 percent of the sunlight available to them, but carbon nanotubes could act as artificial antennae that allow chloroplasts to capture wavelengths of light not in their normal range, such as ultraviolet, green, and near-infrared.

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With carbon nanotubes appearing to act as a “prosthetic photoabsorber,” photosynthetic activity — measured by the rate of electron flow through the thylakoid membranes — was 49 percent greater than that in isolated chloroplasts without embedded nanotubes. When nanoceria and carbon nanotubes were delivered together, the chloroplasts remained active for a few extra hours.

The researchers then turned to living plants and used a technique called vascular infusion to deliver nanoparticles into Arabidopsis thaliana, a small flowering plant. Using this method, the researchers applied a solution of nanoparticles to the underside of the leaf, where it penetrated tiny pores known as stomata, which normally allow carbon dioxide to flow in and oxygen to flow out. In these plants, the nanotubes moved into the chloroplast and boosted photosynthetic electron flow by about 30 percent.

So far, it has not been determined how that extra electron flow influences the plants’ sugar production. “This is a question that we are still trying to answer in the lab: What is the impact of nanoparticles on the production of chemical fuels like glucose?” Giraldo says.

The researchers also showed that they could turn Arabidopsis thaliana plants into chemical sensors by delivering carbon nanotubes that detect the gas nitric oxide, an environmental pollutant produced by combustion.

By adapting the sensors to different targets, the researchers hope to develop plants that could be used to monitor environmental pollution, pesticides, fungal infections, or exposure to bacterial toxins. They are also working on incorporating electronic nanomaterials, such as graphene, into plants.

“Right now, almost no one is working in this emerging field,” Giraldo says. “It’s an opportunity for people from plant biology and the chemical engineering nanotechnology community to work together in an area that has a large potential.”




SOURCE  MIT Top Image - Bryce Vickmark

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 Carbon Nanotubes  

Nitric oxide (NO) is one of the most important signaling molecules in living cells, carrying messages within the brain and coordinating immune system functions. In many cancerous cells, levels are perturbed, but very little is known about how NO behaves in both healthy and cancerous cells.

Nitric oxide (NO) is one of the most important signaling molecules in living cells, carrying messages within the brain and coordinating immune system functions. In many cancerous cells, levels are perturbed, but very little is known about how NO behaves in both healthy and cancerous cells.

"Nitric oxide has contradictory roles in cancer progression, and we need new tools in order to better understand it," says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. "Our work provides a new tool for measuring this important molecule, and potentially others, in the body itself and in real time."

Led by postdoc Nicole Iverson, Strano's lab has built a sensor that can monitor NO in living animals for more than a year. The sensors, described in Nature Nanotechnology, can be implanted under the skin and used to monitor inflammation — a process that produces NO. This is the first demonstration that nanosensors could be used within the body for this extended period of time.

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Such sensors, made of carbon nanotubes, could also be adapted to detect other molecules, including glucose. Strano's team is now working on sensors that could be implanted under the skin of diabetic patients to monitor their glucose or insulin levels, eliminating the need to take blood samples.

Carbon nanotubes — hollow, one-nanometer-thick cylinders made of pure carbon — have drawn great interest as sensors. Strano's lab has recently developed carbon nanotube sensors for a variety of molecules, including hydrogen peroxide and toxic agents such as the nerve gas sarin. Such sensors take advantage of carbon nanotubes' natural fluorescence, by coupling them to a molecule that binds to a specific target. When the target is bound, the tubes' fluorescence brightens or dims.

Strano's lab has previously shown that carbon nanotubes can detect NO if the tubes are wrapped in DNA with a particular sequence. In the new paper, the researchers modified the nanotubes to create two different types of sensors: one that can be injected into the bloodstream for short-term monitoring, and another that is embedded in a gel so it can be implanted long-term under the skin.

To make the particles injectable, Iverson attached PEG, a biocompatible polymer that inhibits particle-clumping in the bloodstream. She found that when injected into mice, the particles can flow through the lungs and heart without causing any damage. Most of the particles accumulate in the liver, where they can be used to monitor NO associated with inflammation.

"So far we have only looked at the liver, but we do see that it stays in the bloodstream and goes to kidneys. Potentially we could study all different areas of the body with this injectable nanoparticle," Iverson says.

The longer-term sensor consists of nanotubes embedded in a gel made from alginate, a polymer found in algae. Once this gel is implanted under the skin of the mice, it stays in place and remains functional for 400 days; the researchers believe it could last even longer. This kind of sensor could be used to monitor cancer or other inflammatory diseases, or to detect immune reactions in patients with artificial hips or other implanted devices, according to the researchers.

Once the sensors are in the body, the researchers shine a near-infrared laser on them, producing a near-infrared fluorescent signal that can be read using an instrument that can tell the difference between nanotubes and other background fluorescence.

Nicole Iverson - Image Source MIT/Bryce Vickmark

Iverson is now working on adapting the technology to detect glucose, by wrapping different kinds of molecules around the nanotubes.

Most diabetic patients must prick their fingers several times a day to take blood glucose readings. While there are electrochemical glucose sensors available that can be attached to the skin, those sensors last only a week at most, and there is a risk of infection because the electrode pierces the skin.

Furthermore, Strano says, the electrochemical sensor technology is not accurate enough to be incorporated into the kind of closed-loop monitoring system that scientists are now working toward. This type of system would consist of a sensor that offers real-time glucose monitoring, connected to an insulin pump that would deliver insulin when needed, with no need for finger pricking or insulin injection by the patient.

"The current thinking is that every part of the closed-loop system is in place except for an accurate and stable sensor. There is considerable opportunity to improve upon devices that are now on the market so that a complete system can be realized," Strano says.



SOURCE  MIT News

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