Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Radiation-Resistant Plants Could Be Used In Space

Posted by timothy on from the perfect-for-lunch-in-the-government-schools dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "New Scientist reports that two decades after the world's largest nuclear disaster, life around Chernobyl continues to adapt, with Chernobyl soya containing significantly different amounts of several dozen proteins, including one protein involved in defending cells from heavy metal and radiation damage. 'One protein is known to actually protect human blood from radiation,' says Martin Hajduch of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. In a study to determine how plants might have adapted to the meltdown, Hajduch's team compared soya grown in radioactive plots near Chernobyl with plants grown about 100 km away in uncontaminated soil. Results from the study suggest that adaptation toward heavy metal stress, protection against radiation damage, and mobilization of seed storage proteins are involved in the plant adaptation mechanism to radioactivity in the Chernobyl region (abstract). Determining how plants coped with life after Chernobyl could help scientists engineer radiation-resistant plants. While few farmers are eager to cultivate radioactive plots on Earth, future interplanetary travelers may one day need to grow crops to withstand space radiation."

43 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. but are they by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    first post resistant?

  2. I for one... by CBob · · Score: 3, Funny

    Welcome our radioactive plant overlords....

    1. Re:I for one... by davester666 · · Score: 4, Funny

      ...can I still call dibs on the patent, or did someone else already do it?

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    2. Re:I for one... by gnick · · Score: 4, Funny

      Would those be of the Audrey II or Triffid variety? Inquiring extraterrestrial-vegetation-phobics want to know.

      --
      He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
    3. Re:I for one... by Z00L00K · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Don't forget the bacteria that also thrives in radioactive environments!

      If anything will survive a hard radiation situation it's bacteria, plants and other kinds of simple life.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    4. Re:I for one... by RsG · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There are no "simple" kinds of life. Dismiss that notion from your mind. It may be what you learnt in school or from popular culture, but it isn't accurate.

      Living things everywhere are shaped by evolutionary pressures. The niches they occupy and the threats they face differ, so too do the mechanisms by which they adapt. But from a basic level, there are no orders of lesser to greater life, except those that exist in our collective imagination.

      Life does not become more advanced. It becomes better adapted to the challenges. "Survival of the fittest" here means fit in the sense of adapted, not "superior" (which is one reason why the phrase is rarely used by people who know the subject well).

      Bigger life forms may be more complex in the sense of having more parts, or possessing intelligence, but they are not more advanced in any meaningful way. Culturally, we draw a distinction between intelligent and unintelligent life, but intelligence itself is simply another survival mechanism. One that we value as a species, but for reasons unrelated to survival itself.

      The reason the smallest living things adapt swiftly to new threats like ionizing radiation has to with reproductive span. The faster you breed, the more quickly you can adapt. Larger forms of life breed, and therefor adapt, more slowly. So in the aftermath of a nuclear disaster (or war), the first to recover are naturally the smallest, but not because they are any simpler.

      --
      Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
    5. Re:I for one... by Aranykai · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Describing something as "simple" doesn't imply that it is inferior.

      --
      If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
    6. Re:I for one... by Yokaze · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You are implying something, which the grand-parent did not. simple is lesser, complex -> more advanced -> better.
      > Bigger life forms may be more complex in the sense of having more parts, or possessing intelligence, but they are not more advanced in any meaningful way.

      So there are more complex lifeforms. Who said something about more advanced? Still, even more advanced wouldn't be wrong. It just means later in time or intricate.

      That people implicate better or higher is the mistake, as you already put it correctly.

      > So in the aftermath of a nuclear disaster (or war), the first to recover are naturally the smallest, but not because they are any simpler.

      Also because they are simpler. Smash a rock and a clock with a hammer, and what are the chances you get something useful of either things?
      Another reason is, that more complex life-forms are usually dependent on simpler ones.

      --
      "Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
    7. Re:I for one... by RsG · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Depends on what the opposite is.

      Simple versus advanced, which is the way most people use the word, is plainly wrong when talking about biology. The myth of the "higher" and "lower" forms of life is one that persists in the public consciousness, but it's been rejected in scientific circles for the better part a century.

      Simple versus complex is a slightly different story. You can describe a multi-cellular organism as more complex in biological terms than a single-celled one in the same way you can say a personal computer is more complex than a single microchip. In those cases, complexity is a shorthand way of referring to the number of "parts" involved, be those parts organ systems or machine components.

      It's still not the preferred way of distinguishing the two, owing to the confusion it causes. When a biologist says "simple" people take it for granted that the opposite is "advanced", which is wrong.

      --
      Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
    8. Re:I for one... by RsG · · Score: 2, Insightful

      See here, where I make that point clear:

      Simple versus complex as opposed to simple versus advanced

      Perhaps the GP knew this and meant simple in that sense. I didn't read his post that way however, since he described plants and bacteria in the same breath as "simple", which is incorrect in several ways.

      Best comparison I can give you is this: A single celled organism is simpler than a multicellular one in the same way a microchip is simpler than a computer. To describe either as less advanced is obviously wrong, but it is fair to say the larger entity is more complicated than the smaller one.

      --
      Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
  3. Life goes on? by SultanCemil · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Realistically, how was this not blindingly obvious?
    If you put a bunch of life forms into a high stress environment, evolution is going to happen quickly. Clearly, the gene for radiation resistance is going to quickly become prevalent in a population exposed to large amounts of radiation....

    Somewhere, Darwin smiles quietly.

    --
    Cemil.
    1. Re:Life goes on? by master5o1 · · Score: 5, Funny

      >Somewhere, Darwin smiles quietly.


      In his grave, maybe? Quietly because he's dead, perhaps?

      --
      signature is pants
    2. Re:Life goes on? by ljw1004 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sigh. "Blindingly obvious" is a silly comment on scientific studies.

      Was it blindingly obvious that 9% (rather than 8% or 10%) of proteins would be differently expressed? Was it blindingly obvious that the best working model so far for adaption involves glycinin, beta conglycinin, dehydrins, and glycine betaine?

      If these particular outcomes were blindingly obvious to you then you're a kook not a scientist.

      If these details don't seem important to you then you're a woolly thinker not a scientist.

    3. Re:Life goes on? by interkin3tic · · Score: 5, Informative

      Realistically, how was this not blindingly obvious?
      If you put a bunch of life forms into a high stress environment, evolution is going to happen quickly. Clearly, the gene for radiation resistance is going to quickly become prevalent in a population exposed to large amounts of radiation....

      You're dramatically oversimplifying things. They weren't asking "will life adapt to these conditions?" Since they were studying plants that were growing in the area, they knew that much already. It was indeed blindingly obvious, they did all their experiments on the proof. They were instead asking "HOW did this life adapt." A much much more complex question. Turns out it's not one gene, and it's not even genes that can be lumped as "radiation resistance."

      The real article abstract(right here) points out that these plants aren't just adapted to one new stress.

      Our results suggest that adaptation toward heavy metal stress, protection against radiation damage, and mobilization of seed storage proteins are involved in plant adaptation mechanism to radioactivity in the Chernobyl region.

      That last stress itself is far from obvious, maybe plant experts would have guessed that would be a problem, but for me at least, I wouldn't have guessed that would be a major problem. But apparently it is, and the plants have overcome it. I would have guessed it would all be DNA damage.

      It also points out that of nearly 700 analyzed proteins, nearly 10% were expressed at different levels from I guess an uncontaminated stock. Far from one gene, seventy genes, apparently tweaked in just a few generations, not millions of years. Not blindingly obvious that evolution could work that fast on that many genes. At least not to me. I also have to point out, that as of yet they don't seem to have found any evidence that nature had to redesign any of the existing machinery, it seems rather that it just changed the levels of machinery made. That's far from certain, but it doesn't seem like it modified most of those 70 proteins, just the levels.

      I'm willing to bet that even though soybeans are an important crop, we don't know all there is to know about their molecular mechanisms of dealing with any of those three problems. And even if we did, we don't know how evolution is going to co-opt these systems to deal with new challenges. So examining the actual pathways will probably tell us a great deal about which proteins are involved in these pathways, if any are being used for new purposes. We might even be able to use something we learn there in human medicine, the new scientist article mentions one of the proteins protects human blood against radiation, if we find that one protein is really critical to helping the plants cope, maybe a drug can be developed that will increase the activity or abundance in that protein to help with radiation poisoning and maybe even help with cancer.

      HOW is extremely complicated, and they're just scratching the surface. It's fascinating, though not so much that I'm going to spend 30 dollars to read the article right now.

  4. future bias by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 4, Funny

    future interplanetary travelers may one day need to grow crops to withstand space radiation.

    What about past interplanetary travelers? Will you not help them? Or are you so biased towards the entropic arrow of time, that you refuse to help those poor interplanetary travelers of the past? You Bastards! How do you sleep at night?

    --
    Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
  5. Well... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It beats bacterium gruel 24/7. Of course, you'd still need to do something about the less than radiation resistant astronauts. I suppose it would be much easier to shield a small habitation pod, than to shield a greenhouse, so that would probably be doable.

    It would be interesting, though, to know how difficult it would be to produce human populations with various useful astronaut properties. Unfortunately, most of what you would want to do would involve running right over the medical ethics cliff and into some dubious stuff. You'd pretty much want a bunch of dwarves(transporting mass out of a gravity well is very expensive) with slow metabolisms(ditto) and high radiation tolerance and possibly some sort of Myostatin related mutation that would allow them to preserve muscle mass in low gravity. I can't think of any sort of genetic engineering or selective breeding that would achieve that end, without getting into rather dubious ground.

    1. Re:Well... by wisty · · Score: 5, Funny

      Slashdotters have already been selected to survive with extreme sensory deprivation, and muscle atrophy. If they could only be bred ...

    2. Re:Well... by timmarhy · · Score: 5, Funny

      bred?! you backwards hick we will be CLONED

      --
      If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
    3. Re:Well... by Tubal-Cain · · Score: 4, Interesting

      IIRC, that plan eventually backfired on the Asgard.

  6. Not just in space, either.... by macraig · · Score: 4, Insightful

    future interplanetary travelers may one day need to grow crops to withstand space radiation."

    This may be needed planet-side on occasion, as well, since not all planetary bodies we might consider as a home have the same aggressive magnetosphere that our own homeworld does: Mars has no better than a patchwork magnetosphere, and what of our own Moon? If we expect to grow plants in "biodomes" for food and use natural sunlight for photosynthesis, then those plants may have to be adapted to accepting something closer to the full brunt of that radiation than they have to endure on the face of this rather well-shielded marble.

    1. Re:Not just in space, either.... by RsG · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Mars has no better than a patchwork magnetosphere, and what of our own Moon? If we expect to grow plants in "biodomes" for food and use natural sunlight for photosynthesis, then those plants may have to be adapted to accepting something closer to the full brunt of that radiation than they have to endure on the face of this rather well-shielded marble.

      One word: Mirrors.

      This is mostly applicable to the moon; mars is a different story. Direct lunar sunlight would be bad for plants anyway; it's much more intense than it is here on earth.

      So, you make your biodome entirely underground, and use reflective surfaces to direct a portion of the light from above to where the crops are. The light is more diffuse that way, which as mentioned is a good thing, and your plants aren't exposed to as much ionizing radiation.

      Of course, how you get through two weeks of lunar night is a separate problem. You'd likely need lamps to provide light for those times.

      For martian colonies, the radiation problem is at least reduced by distance, and very slightly attenuated by an atmosphere. You'd likely want plants that can survive on very thin sunlight, or failing that, you'd want to provide artificial light to make up the difference. Unlike the moon, I suspect you'd be alright setting up a dome on the surface without being fried.

      --
      Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
    2. Re:Not just in space, either.... by macraig · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The Martian surface isn't much more hospitable than the Moon, with respect to radiation. Its atmosphere is of no consequence, but it's really the absence of a magnetosphere that matters. Earth's magnetosphere is really what holds the life-blood of this planet in place, INCLUDING the atmosphere... without it, the solar wind would long ago have stripped our atmosphere away, just as happened to Mars. (That, BTW, is why it's so funny when people muse about terraforming Mars and recreating an atmosphere, because any such effort would have to start with the creation of a magnetosphere like Earth's, which we have no chance in Hell of doing.)

      This planet's magnetosphere - those pretty shimmers in the night sky - is really the ONE thing that made life (in the forms it's taken) possible here.

    3. Re:Not just in space, either.... by Repossessed · · Score: 3, Informative

      Martian surface radiation is only 12 REM a year. Higher than standard on earth, but not significantly more than a typical coal miner gets. It's thin and pathetic atmosphere, such as it is, still blocks half the radiation that comes at it, and the radiation is halved again by the planet itself.

      And Mars lost its atmosphere primarily because its volcanic activity ceased, and its now unable to replenish what it loses. The same thing would happen to Earth eventually, even if it was slower, without our own volcanoes. A magnetosphere isn't necessary at all, Venus has a very weak magnetosphere, resulting only from its atmosphere's interaction with the background/solar radiation, but it has a much thicker atmosphere.

      --
      Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
    4. Re:Not just in space, either.... by RsG · · Score: 4, Informative

      I've seen both explanations for the disparity in atmospheres, and I'm inclined to think both have merit.

      Venus has more to separate it than volcanism. Earth, which is its closest neighbour in size, has a moon, and very likely gained it by way of an ancient collision some 3-4 billion years ago. The atmosphere would have been blown away, reforming at a reduced density after the fact. Moreover, it's possible the moon itself may have skimmed off some of the upper atmosphere over hundreds of millions of years. Venus has had no similar events, leading to an atmosphere that's only gotten thicker.

      Mars, which is much smaller than either, has two moons, frequent asteroid collisions (though none as violent as the one that led to our moon), and a cooling interior leading to reduced volcanism and the failure of the magnetic field. When it comes to explaining mars' relative lack of air, any of the above could be contributing factors.

      --
      Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
    5. Re:Not just in space, either.... by DerekLyons · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That, BTW, is why it's so funny when people muse about terraforming Mars and recreating an atmosphere, because any such effort would have to start with the creation of a magnetosphere like Earth's, which we have no chance in Hell of doing.

      Given that it took anywhere from tens to hundreds of thousands of years to strip away the Martian atmosphere - we no more need to recreate a magnetosphere to terraform Mars than I need my own oil well to keep my car running. I just fill 'er up every time my gas tank runs low.

  7. Shielding? by w0mprat · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'd rather the space hotel I visit would have adequate shielding, than require radiation resistance plants for it's hydroponic salad.

    --
    After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
  8. Public Perceptions by copponex · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Many people believe that any radioactive event will render an area lifeless for tens of thousands of years. Similarly, the fear of a "dirty bomb" persists, despite the fact that surviving the initial blast represents less increased risk of cancer than smoking cigarettes or having a poor diet. There would be possibly huge cleanup costs, but probably cheaper than a few weeks in Iraq.

    1. Re:Public Perceptions by SultanCemil · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yeah it does seem a little strange that people worry so much about dirty bombs. Surely the toxins in the environment (or hell, diet coke) do more damage to more people....

      --
      Cemil.
    2. Re:Public Perceptions by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      People fear risks that are imposed upon them more than they fear risks that they take on themselves. See fear of cars vs. fear of aircraft.

      Also, the cynic might suggest that most people see the "war on terror" in all its excesses, as a much lighter burden than a good diet and some exercise...

    3. Re:Public Perceptions by timmarhy · · Score: 4, Insightful
      the media has a lot to answer for imho, it's the same reporting that has people believing that a single fibre of asbestos will kill you, when in fact the stuff is everywhere being brought up by natural springs etc since forever.

      people will squeal like stuck pigs about food colourings, radiation, asbestos, CO2 (hah seriously) and then they will pop open a diet coke and eat some geneticly enhanced chicken mcnuggets.

      --
      If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
    4. Re:Public Perceptions by RsG · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Food colouring? That was kinda random.

      Asbestos has less to do with the dangers it poses, and more to do with the way we used it freely decades ago. People do overreact, but it's a response to a time in which the stuff was used for everything down to cigarette butts.

      I'll agree with you on radiation though. There are far too few people who know enough about physics and biology to understand the problem rationally. Moreover, I think we as a culture are still stinging from the cold war, and the notion that we might one day face the reality of widespread fallout. "Nuclear" is still a dirty word.

      Side note: you mentioned genetically engineered chicken as something people hypocritically don't worry about. That isn't the case in my experience; genetic engineering is becoming the new nuke in the eyes of the public. Google "frankenfood", or look at the popularity of food advertised as being free of engineering, in the same breath as advertising it free of pesticides and hormones.

      --
      Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
    5. Re:Public Perceptions by threephaseboy · · Score: 4, Informative

      Food colouring? That was kinda random.

      Not really

      --
      .
    6. Re:Public Perceptions by Silicon+Jedi · · Score: 2, Informative

      So Mountain Dew causes Anxiety, Depression, and Insomnia....

    7. Re:Public Perceptions by soupforare · · Score: 2, Funny

      Only when I run out

      --
      --- Do you believe in the day?
    8. Re:Public Perceptions by Scrameustache · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Many people believe that any radioactive event will render an area lifeless for tens of thousands of years.

      "Hiroshima is contaminated with radiation. It will be barren of life and nothing will grow for 75 years." These words were spoken in an interview with Dr. Harold Jacobsen, a scientist with the Manhattan Project (the A-bomb development project), and printed in the Washington Post on August 8, 1945.

      In Hiroshima, they have that quote on a plaque at the foot of a tree, scorched from the bottom up to a point where it had been broken by the blast, and with the trunk having re-sprouted there and having grown into a full canopy since.

      Scientists are sometimes wrong in their assumptions.

      --

      You can't take the sky from me...

    9. Re:Public Perceptions by Mashiki · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Stop eating...EVERYTHING!

      This whole GE bit is nonsense and drives me up the wall. We've been doing it for thousands of years with domestication, selective breeding, and tightly controlled pollination methods. Hello Mr. common moo-moo cow, common yellow banana(ever eaten a seeded banana? blah), flightless chicken, stupid turkey, various improved breeds of corn, wheat, rice, and rye.

      Greetings Man's Best Friend, I realize we've been improving your species for the last 10,000yrs for various reasons. Still friends right?

      Special interest groups, and the media need to dig their heads out of their asses.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    10. Re:Public Perceptions by Mashiki · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Sensible people who are in favour of GE labelling are in it for one thing: we'd like to be able to not choose commercially owned monoculture species.

      I take it that you don't eat bananas(feel free to pick one of several different varieties however, just remember the common banana was a genetic mistake), one of the three main staples of rice, or one of the 5 modern varieties of potatoes(even though there are 50 grown around the world for consumption). Let alone any of the modern types of rye or wheat then. Without GEing food, you're left with one thing a population that can't feed itself by introducing varieties that produce large and more bountiful yields or are more resistant to whatever issues that are cropping up.

      You may or may not know this, but the common cow species we have now, was bred out of a very vicious version about 4,000 years ago. Anyway, I'm not sure where you're getting the bull insemination bit from, but up here in wonderful Canada land(where cows outnumber people), we have somewhere in the range of 5-10:1 in breeding stocks, same with sheep. This ensures a wide genetic variety in stocks, especially outside of the herds.

      Genetic diversity changes more quickly in plant populations then you'd expect, even with us attempting to modify plants(try breeding roses sometime) via forced and non-forced breeding. If you're not trying to increase yields to let people eat, and support a population. We might as well go back to "Positive population checks" aka death, famine, and war while we're at it. Personally, I'm not one to say sorry folks but we only have enough food for 4b people, time to draw straws and let 2b starve to death. Are you?

      Sadly you've only got one choice, but you're not going to end up with a single genetic monoculture for a plant species. To think that, you're being naive. We already know what happens when you do that.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
  9. Rad-X by pgn674 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wonder if that protein could be used to make real world Rad-X as from the Fallout series?

  10. Radiation resistant humans . . . by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 4, Funny

    . . . is the next step in this study, I guess. If we were all radiation resistant, we could ditch fossil fuels and switch to nuclear.

    Radioactive waste? I eat it for breakfast.

    And my stomach functions as a breeder reactor, so my shit can be used to generate even more power.

    Top that.

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    1. Re:Radiation resistant humans . . . by RsG · · Score: 3, Funny

      Radioactive waste? I eat it for breakfast.

      You really shouldn't be going to Taco Bell that early in the day.

      And my stomach functions as a breeder reactor, so my shit can be used to generate even more power.

      Does that mean the nearest bathroom goes China syndrome around lunchtime?

      --
      Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
  11. Re:This is proof of the existence of God by RsG · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I know you're joking, but it's stories like this I want to show genuine creationists. Just to see if they can weasel out of it.

    Of course, the ones with half a working brain already preempted the point by imagining a distinction between micro and macro evolution. Note that there is no such distinction in reality, but imagining there is can provide a handy way of dismissing actual evidence of evolution in action. A variant of the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.

    This method is proof that creationist ideas can evolve, which I find deliciously ironic - when subjected to selection pressure, they develop new mechanisms of denial to cope. :-P

    --
    Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
  12. Ob BBC by mr_3ntropy · · Score: 2, Informative

    Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' --BBC News





    No, seriously.

  13. E-I-E-I-D'OH! by Barradrewda · · Score: 2, Funny

    Finally, tomacco!