Reducing Plant Stress Leads to Martian Farms

Saint Aardvark the Carpeted writes "NASA is looking for ways to get plants to grow on Mars -- and surprisingly, reducing their stress is a good first step. By splicing genes from Earth-bound extremophiles into seeds whose descendants are destined for the red planet, scientists hope to breed plants that can handle the wide range of temperatures (pdf) that will be found on Mars."

Comments

Gibberish

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me or did that summary look like complete gibberish?

Re:possible priority question?

[NanoGator]

"...but surely research into plants that can take extremes is of more short-term utility in creating species which can suck up and withhold pollutants as part of a clean-up operation for Earth"

Who's to say the research won't find its way in that direction? It's not NASA's job to rid the world of pollution. Funny thing about research is that the more diverse it gets, the bigger toolbox this civilization has to fix other problems.

Re:Contaminate?

[coastwalker]

Well said. I nominate anyone who has scruples about squishing a few inadequate martian microbes with our super strong bio-engineered armour plated vacuum growing mega-sunflowers .. I nominate them for being both spoil sports and as candidates for a Darwin Award.

No Realy - Having said that it annoys me intensely that the churches taking advantage of our religious memes are so primitive that they havent got much further than a set of worries about 1st centuary Palestinian social mores - when they could be focusing on our collective impact on the environment which would appear to be an ongoing concern since the industrial revolution. In fact if you are looking for the most modern and relevant religion it would probably be environmental fanaticism. Having said that I've never liked goatee beards and I am not going to stop eating steak anytime soon myself.

A proper understanding of what lifeforms are already on mars and an effort to ensure that they are conserved would also be in our interest because they will already have the most usefull genes for surviving in the Martian environment - even or perhaps especially if they are rare and difficult to find.