What about WiFi plants?

What if the plants that decorate our apartments could purify the air of its pollutants, emit light, and even store data? Scenarios worthy of science fiction that are nevertheless rooted in reality. Foray into the not-so-distant future of indoor plants.

Valerie Simard
The Press

In the Parisian premises of Station F, which prides itself on being “the largest start-up campus in the world”, Lionel Mora and Patrick Torbey grow plants. Pothos (Epipremnum aureum), one of the most common and easiest to keep alive houseplants. But these are not quite like the ones we have in our living rooms.

On October 27, their company Neoplants unveiled, after four years of scientific research, a plant capable of cleaning the ambient air of its pollutants, and this, as effectively as 30 standard indoor plants.

“A plant is a magnificent, almost iconic organism. What is the strongest function we can give it? Very instinctively, we thought that if they were able to purify the air, it would be great,” says Lionel Mora, a former Googler who became co-founder and CEO of Neoplants.

Called Neo P1, this bioengineered plant has been genetically modified to capture and recycle certain air pollutants commonly found in homes, such as benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene and xylene (BTEX ), as well as formaldehyde. These volatile organic compounds (VOCs), released into the ambient air, can come from different sources such as building materials, furniture, household cleaning products and cooking.

Mr. Torbey, the Chief Technology Officer at Neoplants, holds a PhD in genome editing (transgenesis and CRISPR/Cas9, a revolutionary technique for easier and more precise editing of DNA sequences).

“Ever since I was little, I’ve been fascinated by nature and by one thing in particular: DNA, which is a molecule that codes the characteristics of all living organisms,” he says. Changing this molecule changes the characteristics of an organism. »

To increase the purification power of pothos, Patrick Torbey and his team used synthetic biology, a discipline that combines biology and engineering. By inserting synthetic metabolic pathways into the plant, they allow the plant to integrate VOCs into its metabolic chains by transforming formaldehyde into fructose and BTEX into amino acids, thus creating plant matter. Because the plant also lives with a colony of fungi and bacteria that also have VOC-scavenging potential, its microbiome was enhanced using directed evolution.

The opening of pre-orders for the Neo P1 is scheduled for the first quarter of 2023 with delivery to follow later in the year. Each plant will be sold at a cost of US$179, which includes the pot, specially designed to facilitate maintenance, and the microbiome for a period of three months, which should ideally be renewed every month or so for the moment. month and a half. The company is initially targeting the American market, but it does not rule out expanding it to Canada eventually.

Does it work? Difficult for the consumer to know, since it is complicated to measure the level of VOCs in a room. Neoplants, however, claims to have conducted conclusive tests in collaboration with the University of Lille, the results of which are published in a white paper, which does not, however, constitute a peer-reviewed study.

For the two entrepreneurs, this is a first step towards the development of plants that would have a positive impact on our lives and climate change. “Is it possible to add a function to a plant that allows it to absorb and store much more carbon than a normal plant? asks Patrick Torbey.

Improving plant photosynthesis is a challenge that several laboratories have tried to take up in the past. Without much success so far. But the scientist remains optimistic.

Data storage and lighting

The Neoplants laboratory is certainly not the only one trying to multiply the potential of the plants around us. Researchers at the University of Washington have also succeeded in improving the depollution capacities of pothos by introducing a rabbit gene. At the University of Tennessee, Professor Neal Stewart’s team is looking into phytosensors that would allow plants to detect pollutants in the air such as mold or radon, pathogens, chemicals or radiation. Grow Your Own Cloud, a start-up company that began as an art project, wants to replace data centers with “data forests” by storing digital data in plants.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in the laboratory of chemical engineer Michael S. Strano, the plants light up like in the universe of the film Avatar. “We want to turn a plant into a lamp, summarizes the professor of chemical engineering at MIT, in a telephone interview. We’re working on making their lights brighter and last longer, so you don’t have to reapply chemistry as often. We also want the plant to be able to turn off or turn on, either by the human or by coupling it to the plant itself, so that when it’s dark, the plant turns on its light, and when it is day, she turns it off. »

After first managing to make watercress plants glow for four hours by using nanoparticle carriers to bring luciferase, the enzyme that gives fireflies their glow, into the plant, his team achieved the last year what the professor then described as “a big step towards plant-based lighting”.

Using specialized nanoparticles embedded in the leaves, engineers have created, without altering its DNA, a plant whose light is 10 times brighter than the previous one, which can store light and can be charged by a light-emitting diode. After 10 seconds of charging, the plant shines for about an hour and can be recharged repeatedly. But ideally, it would convert part of its energy into light and could re-emit part of the sunlight it would have captured.

The process can be applied to almost all varieties of plants. According to Michael S. Strano, the time when our indoor plants can be a source of light is not so far away. “Five or ten years,” he predicts. Could they even one day become our main source of lighting? “Absolutely, if we want it. The technology is there. Everything else is just a matter of engineering and cost. One question we need to ask ourselves is: where do we want plant-based lighting and under what conditions? Some points also remain to be studied, such as the interaction of insects with these luminescent plants.

Modifying plant life has the potential to have significant effects on our existence and that of other living beings. For Partick Torbey, it is essential that a debate on the limits that should be imposed is carried out in society. “GMOs as such are only a tool. You could say that there are ethical questions around the use of steel. If you make a sword out of it, it can kill people, if you make a fork out of it, it can feed them. It’s a tool that can be very powerful and needs to be looked at closely to make sure you’re doing it right. »

“A lot of ideas”

Light-emitting plants are just one part of the research conducted by the Strano Research Group.

And if you allow yourself to dream, the possibilities are endless. The documentary series The Future ofproduced by Netflix and The Verge, also devotes an episode to it in which Emma Marris, an American author specializing in the environment, maintains that “we barely touch the potential of indoor plants”.

“You could have plants that would be WiFi antennas, extrapolates Michael S. Strano. They could be cameras, chemical sensors, motion detection and humans. They could detect pathogens, substances that are harmful to humans. What the plant can detect, you could take to the internet by sending it to your cell phone. If you talk about plants as a light source, you could have plants emitting any color of light. You could decorate your whole house. Your whole house could be lit with herbal lighting. And you wouldn’t need to plug in a single plant. Or change the light bulbs!