James W. Satterlee, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

As any avid gardener will tell you, plants with sharp thorns and prickles can leave you looking like you’ve had a run-in with an angry cat. Wouldn’t it be nice to rid plants of their prickles entirely but keep the tasty fruits and beautiful flowers?

I’m a geneticist who, along with my colleagues, recently discovered the gene that accounts for prickliness across a variety of plants, including roses, eggplants and even some species of grasses. Genetically tailored, smooth-stemmed plants may eventually arrive at a garden center near you.

Acceleration of nature

Plants and other organisms evolve naturally over time. When random changes to their DNA, called mutations, enhance survival, they get passed on to offspring. For thousands of years, plant breeders have taken advantage of these variations to create high-yielding crop varieties.

In 1983, the first genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, appeared in agriculture. Golden rice, engineered to combat vitamin A deficiency, and pest-resistant corn are just a couple of examples of how genetic modification has been used to enhance crop plants.

Two recent developments have changed the landscape further. The advent of gene editing using a technique known as CRISPR has made it possible to modify plant traits more easily and quickly. If the genome of an organism were a book, CRISPR-based gene editing is akin to adding or removing a sentence here or there.

This tool, combined with the increasing ease with which scientists can sequence an organism’s complete collection of DNA – or genome – is rapidly accelerating the ability to predictably engineer an organism’s traits.

By identifying a key gene that controls prickles in eggplants, our team was able to use gene editing to mutate the same gene in other prickly species, yielding smooth, prickle-free plants. In addition to eggplants, we got rid of prickles in a desert-adapted wild plant species with edible raisin-like fruits.

We also used a virus to silence the expression of a closely related gene in roses, yielding a rose without thorns.

In natural settings, prickles defend plants against grazing herbivores. But under cultivation, edited plants would be easier to handle – and after harvest, fruit damage would be reduced. It’s worth noting that prickle-free plants still retain other defenses, such as their chemical-laden epidermal hairs called trichomes that deter insect pests.

From glowing petunias to purple tomatoes

Today, DNA modification technologies are no longer confined to large-scale agribusiness – they are becoming available directly to consumers.

One approach is to mutate certain genes, like we did with our prickle-free plants. For example, scientists have created a mild-tasting but nutrient-dense mustard green by inactivating the genes responsible for bitterness. Silencing the genes that delay flowering in tomatoes has resulted in compact plants well suited to urban agriculture.

Another modification approach is to permanently transfer genes from one species to another, using recombinant DNA technology to yield what scientists call a transgenic organism.

At a recent party, I found myself crowded into a darkened bathroom to observe the faint glow of the host’s newly acquired firefly petunia, which contains the genes responsible for the ghost ear mushroom’s bioluminescent glow. Scientists have also modified a pothos houseplant with a gene from rabbits, which allows it to host air-filtering microbes that promote the breakdown of harmful volatile organic compounds, or VOCs.

Consumers can also grow the purple tomato, genetically engineered to contain pigment-producing genes from the snapdragon plant, resulting in antioxidant-rich tomatoes with a dark purple hue.

Risks and rewards

The introduction of genetically modified plants into the consumer market brings with it both exciting opportunities and potential challenges.

With genetically edited plants in the hands of the public, there could be less oversight over what people do with them. For instance, there is a risk of environmental release, which could have unforeseen ecological consequences. Additionally, as the market for these plants expands, the quality of products may become more variable, necessitating new or more vigilant consumer protection laws. Companies could also apply patent rules limiting seed reuse, echoing some of the issues seen in the agricultural sector.

The future of plant genetic technology is bright – in some cases, quite literally. Bioluminescent golf courses, houseplants that emit tailored fragrances or flowers capable of changing their color in response to spray-based treatments are all theoretical possibilities. But as with any powerful technology, careful regulation and oversight will be crucial to ensuring these innovations benefit consumers while minimizing potential risks.

James W. Satterlee, Postdoctoral Fellow in Plant Genetics, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Jian Liu, University of Tennessee

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.

Is it possible to make a phone through which we can smell, like we can hear and see? – Muneeba K., age 10, Pakistan

Imagine this: You pick up your phone for a video call with a friend. Not only can you see their face and hear their voice, but you can also smell the cookies they just baked. It sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, but could it actually happen?

I’m a computer scientist who studies how machines sense the world.

What phones do now

When you listen to music or talk to someone on your phone, you can hear the sound through the built-in speakers. These speakers convert digital signals into physical vibrations using a tiny component called a diaphragm. Your ears sense those vibrations as sound waves.

Your phone also has a screen that displays images and videos. The screen uses tiny dots known as pixels that consist of three primary colors: red, green and blue. By mixing these colors in different ways, your phone can show you everything from beautiful beach scenes to cute puppies.

Smelling with phones

Now how about the sense of smell? Smells are created by tiny particles called molecules that float through the air and reach your nose. Your nose then sends signals to your brain, which identifies the smell.

So, could your phone send these smell molecules to you? Scientists are working on it. Think about how your phone screen works. It doesn’t have every color in the world stored inside it. Instead, it uses just three colors to create millions of different hues and shades.

Now imagine something similar for smells. Scientists are developing digital scent technology that uses a small number of different cartridges, each containing a specific scent. Just like how pixels mix three colors to create images, these scent cartridges could mix to create different smells.

Just like images on your phone are made of digital codes that represent combinations of pixels, smells produced by a future phone could be created using digital codes. Each smell could have a specific recipe made up of different amounts of the ingredients in the cartridges.

When you receive a digital scent code, your phone could mix tiny amounts of the different scents from the cartridges to create the desired smell. This mix would then be released through a small vent on the phone, allowing you to smell it. With just a few cartridges, your phone could potentially create a huge variety of smells, much like how red, green and blue pixels can create countless colors.

Researchers and companies are already working on digital odor makers like this.

The challenges to making smell phones

Creating a phone that can produce smells involves several challenges. One is designing a system that can produce thousands of different smells using only a few cartridges. Another is how to control how strong a scent should be and how long a phone should emit it. And phones will also need to sense odors near them and convert those to digital codes so your friends’ phones can send smells to you.

The cartridges should also be easy to refill, and the chemicals in them be safe to breathe. These hurdles make it a tricky but exciting area of research.

An odiferous future

Even though we’re not there yet, scientists and engineers are working hard to make smell phones a reality. Maybe one day you’ll be able to not only see and hear your friend’s birthday party over the phone, but also smell the candles they blew out!

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

Jian Liu, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Tennessee

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Kyle G. Volk, University of Montana

Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.

Title of course:

“Intoxication Nation: Alcohol in American History”

What prompted the idea for the course?

I wanted to get students excited about studying the past by learning about something that is very much a part of their own lives.

Alcohol – somewhat surprisingly to me at first – featured prominently in my own research on minority rights and U.S. democracy in the mid-19th century. As a result, I knew quite a bit about the temperance movement and conflicts over prohibition during that period. Designing this course allowed me to broaden my expertise.

What does the course explore?

Prohibition is a must-do subject. Students expect it. But I cover several hundred years of history: from the 17th-century invention of rum – as a byproduct of sugar produced by enslaved people – to the rise of craft beer and craft spirits in the 21st century.

Along the way, I’m thrilled when students get excited about details that allow them to taste a more complicated historical cocktail. For example, they learn why white women’s production of hard cider was crucial to the survival of colonial Virginia. The short answer: Potable water was in short supply, alcoholic drinks were far healthier, and white men – and their indentured and enslaved workforce – were busy raising tobacco. It fell to women to turn fruit into salvation.

Why is this course relevant now?

Alcohol remains a big and almost inescapable part of American society. But of late, Americans have been drinking differently – and thinking about drinking differently.

Examples abound. Alcohol producers, we learn, now face competition from legalized weed. Drinking l evels rose during the COVID-19 pandemic, yet interest is declining among Gen Zers. The “wine mom” culture that brought some mothers together now faces mounting criticism.

And, of course, there’s the never-ending debate about the health benefits and risks of alcohol. Of late, the risks seem to be dominating headlines.

What’s a critical lesson from the course?

Alcohol has been a highly controversial, central aspect of the American experience, shaping virtually all sectors of our society – political and constitutional, business and economic, social and cultural.

What materials does the course feature?

• Historian Bill Rorabaugh’s “The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition”: a classic social history explaining why Americans in the early 19th century drank twice as much per capita as we do today

• Jack London’s alcoholic memoir, “John Barleycorn”: a deep dive into the notorious workingmen’s saloons of the industrial era, as well as one person’s reckoning with alcoholism

• “Days of Wine and Roses”: the 1962 film starring Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick that spotlighted the place of alcoholic marriages and Alcoholics Anonymous in post-World War II America

• Murray Sperber’s “Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports is Crippling Undergraduate Education”: a provocative early 2000s assessment of college sports and the surrounding party culture vis-a-vis declining academic standards – still relevant today

What will the course prepare students to do?

Like any history course, this one aims to develop student’s analytical, written, research and verbal skills. In lots of ways, the topic is just a tool to get students to grow their brains. But I also seek to grow students’ critical awareness of the place of alcohol in their own lives. The course has also informed students’ paths after graduation – including some who wound up working in the alcohol industry or recovery organizations.

Kyle G. Volk, Professor of History, University of Montana

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.