The First Martian Immigrant —— Transgenic Plants

The First Martian Immigrant —— Transgenic Plants

Southern Weekend 200 1 June 14

Compiled by Joe aguang.

The first Martian immigrant from the earth may not be a human, but a plant. In 2007, NASA plans to launch a "scout" spacecraft to send Arabidopsis thaliana with jellyfish luminescent genes to Mars (although it seems that the spacecraft did not launch as scheduled, so this article is still science fiction).

Learning to plant plants on Mars is an important condition for human survival. Future explorers need oxygen, food and pure water, which are too expensive to transport from the earth, but plants can easily provide these substances and become part of the biological regeneration life support system.

To establish such a safeguard system on Mars, we should first try to build a special greenhouse on Mars and grow plants with Martian soil.

To this end, NASA scientists plan to send a special lander to Mars. The robot on the lander scooped up a part of Martian soil. Scientists use robots and cameras to analyze soil composition, and then add fertilizers, buffers and nutrients to make seeds germinate and grow in a small greenhouse. Arabidopsis thaliana was chosen for the experiment because it has three advantages: its plants are short and can be placed in small greenhouses; Its life cycle is not long, only six weeks; Its entire genome has been deciphered. For the same reason, the "independent experiment" of the International Space Station also uses it to study the response of plants to microgravity.

Plants have no legs and can only adapt to the environment provided to them and respond to stimuli.

By adding indicator substances to the "sensors" of plants, scientists can know whether they are fighting for survival and whether they have special reactions to the Martian environment.

In order to understand the growth of plants on Mars, scientists have designed two parts of genes for plants used for experiments: sensing genes for detecting the environment and indicator genes that can emit light. They connected the sensor gene with the indicator gene fragment and used a bacterium to send the newly generated gene into the plant. These indicator genes can reflect the dryness and temperature of the environment and whether plants are sick. For example, if there is an excessive amount of a heavy metal in the soil of Mars, it will emit the green light of incandescent lamp, and conversely, in the environment of peroxide, it will emit the blue light. The camera on the lander will record this glow and then send the signal back to Earth.

The sensing gene comes from Arabidopsis thaliana, and the indicator gene comes from Victoria luminous jellyfish, a common jellyfish living along the Pacific coast of North America. Its life cycle is about six months and its body length is 5 to 19 cm. It can emit soft green light along the edge of the bell.

The greenhouse on the lander can hold 20 to 30 plants. Scientists plan to put them in small glass containers and plant a plant in 1 to 2 grams of Martian soil.

Through optical fiber, the sunlight on Mars can be injected into the greenhouse and put into the humidified and oxygenated Martian atmosphere. Of course, it is best to plant it directly on Mars. This is the original intention of this plan.

As a long-term plan, scientists intend to use plants to reduce carbon dioxide and increase oxygen on Mars, making it suitable for human habitation.