Why are plants so important?

The role of plants if frequently overlooked as we tend to take them for granted often forgetting that they play key role for our survival. Plants are primary source of food because all of our food is produced by plants, either directly or indirectly via animals that consume them.

Plants are not only an important source of food but also a very important source of energy and their role will no doubt grow as the world's hunger for energy is constantly increasing. The photosynthesis done by land plants is the ultimate source of energy and organic material in nearly all ecosystems.

Plants help protect our planet from environmental degradation and therefore keep our environment healthy (they play key role in soil development and prevent soil erosion). Plants are also key components of the water cycle and several other biogeochemical cycles.

Plants also play essential role in development of many different medicines used to treat different diseases and also help people relax (gardening and other horticultural therapies).

Plants are also used for many different aesthetic purposes (flowering plants).

There are many environmental issues that threaten plants across the globe, most notably climate change issue. The biodiversity of plants is something our planet can't survive without and therefore we have to try to protect many plant species from being destroyed by climate change.

Climate change is the biggest environmental threat plants have to face today but sadly not the only one as plants are also experiencing huge threat from pollution and deforestation.

The science of botany (as well as other related sub-sciences) is bound to face difficult challenges in years to come and is certainly in need of new research in order to tackle different environmental issues that threaten many plant species all across the globe.

Plant research needs a big step forward and this can be done only by using the most advanced technologies available to study the life of the plants.

Read more...

Invasive species are not always bad for ecosystems

Invasive species have more often than not negative impact on native ecosystems, and can in extreme cases even lead to extinction of native species. This is because invasive species in most cases compete with native species for food an other resources, and this often results in negative environmental effects.

But as said in the title of the post not all invasive species are bad for native ecosystems, and this was showed by the team of scientists who introduced invasive species of plants which resulted in positive environmental effects.

Tomás Carlo, an assistant professor of biology at Penn State University, and Jason Gleditsch, a graduate student in the Department of Biology, have sectioned off an area of central Pennsylvania known as the Happy Valley region, where honeysuckle, a non-native invasive fruiting plant, grows in abundance. Afterwards they assessed the abundance of bird species and fruiting plants, including honeysuckle, within the area. The conclusion was that the honeysuckle and bird communities had formed a relationship known as mutualism, where two species interact by benefiting mutually from each other's existence. In this case, honeysuckle provided birds with the food in the fall while birds benefit honeysuckle by dispersing the plant's seeds across a wider geographical area.

This study just proves that nature is in the condition of constant change, and that eliminating non-native species isn't always the right solution to protect native ecosystems, in most cases yes, but not in all cases. This is because humans have already changed many ecosystems beyond the recognition point so many native species are already rare, and some have already gone extinct.

Observation and comprehensive studying is the key for conservation, and scientists should consider all possible options, not just sticking with one, no matter how right this option might appear. As this study proved, invasive species shouldn't be always treated as threat to native animals because in some cases invasive species can form positive connection with native species which benefits given ecosystem.

We have been taught many times that generalization isn't exactly the best scientific method, and invasive species are clear evidence of this.

The results of this study will soon be published in the journal Diversity and Distributions.

Read more...

How to replicate photosynthesis in the lab?

Though we like to say for ourselves that we are technologically and scientifically very advanced there are still some "simple" processes that scientists cannot successfully copy in their laboratories, and one of these processes is photosynthesis, as scientists are still not able to copy plants in their process of converting sunlight into stored energy, and doing this process reliably day after day, year after year. If scientists would be able to copy this process this would turn solar energy into one of the most efficient energy sources in the world, making it competitive to fossil fuels, and this would in the end resulted in less harmful CO2 emissions responsible for climate change.

However, the road from "if" to "yes" is very long, and scientists, despite their constant research still struggle to be as effective as plants are. One of the main stumbling blocks on the road is the fact that the sun's rays can be highly destructive to many materials, which can lead to the degradation of harvesting systems, which can significantly decrease efficiency of the process on the long run. Plants are able to bypass this issue by constantly breaking down their light-capturing molecules and then reassembling them from scratch, so the basic structures that capture the sun's energy are always brand new.

Can science also bypass this issue? If the latest reports are correct, then yes it can, though still not as effective as plants can. In fact some MIT scientists have recently created a novel set of self-assembling molecules that can turn sunlight into electricity. These molecules can be repeatedly broken down and then reassembled quickly, just by adding or removing an additional solution.

Specifically for this process scientists produced synthetic molecules called "phospholipids" that form discs, and these discs provide structural support for other molecules that actually respond to light, in structures called reaction centers, which release electrons when struck by particles of light. The discs, carrying the reaction centers, are in a solution where they attach themselves spontaneously to carbon nanotubes. The nanotubes hold the phospholipid discs in a uniform alignment so that the reaction centers can all be exposed to sunlight at once, and they also act as wires to collect and channel the flow of electrons knocked loose by the reactive molecules.

The final results showed efficiency of these new molecular structures in converting sunlight at about 40 percent, which is double the efficiency of today's best commercial solar cells. Theoretically, the efficiency of the structures could be close to 100 percent. The efficiency would be far better if it wasn't for the fact that the concentration of the structures in the solution was low, so the overall efficiency of the device, and thus the amount of electricity produced for a given surface area was fairly low. But scientists are already working on ways to significantly increase the concentration, and thus improve the efficiency of the process.

Read more...

Why is it good to have plants in your office?

Why is it good to have plants in your office? This is not just the matter of aesthetics but also the very important health matter, especially helpful against indoor air pollution. Many people are not aware that indoor air pollution is significant problem across the globe. In fact according to World Health Organization (WHO) indoor air pollution is responsible for more than 1.6 million deaths each year. Indoor air pollution can emanate from many different sources such as paints, varnishes, furnishings, clothing, solvents, building materials, tap water, etc. Simple plants can be excellent ally in fight against indoor air pollution.

Read more...