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Scientists from Disruptive & Sustainable Technologies for Agricultural Precision (DiSTAP), an interdisciplinary research group (IRG) at Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research firm in Singapore, have designed a new type of vegetable nanobionic optical sensor capable of detecting and monitoring, in real time, the arsenic levels of highly toxic heavy metals in the underground environment. This development offers significant advantages over conventional methods used to measure arsenic in the environment and will be important for both environmental monitoring and agricultural applications to safeguard food safety, as arsenic is a contaminant in many common agricultural products such as rice, vegetables and tea leaves.
This new approach is described in a paper entitled “Plant Nanobionic Sensors for Arsenic Detection”, recently published in Advanced material. The paper was led by Dr. Tedrick Thomas Salim Lew, a recent graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and co-authored by Michael Strano, DiSTAP Co-Chief Principal Investigator and Carbon P. Dubbs Professor at MIT, as well as Minkyung Park and Jianqiao Cui, both MIT graduate students.
Arsenic and its compounds pose a serious threat to humans and ecosystems. Long-term exposure to arsenic in humans can cause a wide range of adverse health effects, including cardiovascular diseases such as heart attack, diabetes, birth defects, severe skin lesions and numerous cancers including those of the skin, bladder and lung. High levels of arsenic in the soil as a result of anthropogenic activities such as mining and smelting are also harmful to plants, inhibiting growth and causing significant crop losses. More worryingly, food crops can absorb arsenic from the soil, leading to the contamination of food and products consumed by humans. Arsenic in underground environments can also contaminate groundwater and other groundwater sources, the long-term consumption of which can cause serious health problems. Therefore, the development of accurate, effective and easy to install arsenic sensors is important to protect both the agricultural sector and wider environmental safety.
These new optical nanosensors developed by SMART DiSTAP show changes in their fluorescence intensity upon arsenic detection. Incorporated into plant tissues with no harmful effects on the plant, these sensors provide a non-destructive way to monitor the internal dynamics of arsenic absorbed by plants from the soil. This integration of optical nanosensors within living plants allows the conversion of plants into self-powered arsenic detectors from their natural environment, marking a significant improvement over time-intensive arsenic sampling methods and equipment of current conventional methods .
Lead author Dr Tedrick Thomas Salim Lew said: “Our plant-based nanosensor is notable not only for being the first of its kind, but also for the significant advantages it confers over conventional measurement methods. of arsenic levels in the underground environment, which require less time, equipment and labor. We expect this innovation to eventually see widespread use in the agricultural sector and beyond. I am grateful to SMART DiSTAP and Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL), who are Both were instrumental in the generation of ideas, scientific discussions as well as research funding for this work. “
In addition to detecting arsenic in rice and spinach, the team also used a species of fern, Pteris cretica, which can hyperaccumulate arsenic. This fern species can absorb and tolerate high levels of arsenic without any detrimental effects – by designing an ultra-sensitive plant arsenic detector, capable of detecting very low concentrations of arsenic, down to 0.2 parts per billion (ppb). In contrast, the regulatory limit for arsenic detectors is 10 parts per billion. In particular, the new nanosensors can also be integrated into other plant species. This is the first successful demonstration of living plant-based arsenic sensors and represents a revolutionary advance that could prove very useful both in agricultural research (e.g. to monitor arsenic absorbed by edible crops for food safety) and in monitoring. general environmental.
Previously, conventional methods for measuring arsenic levels included regular field sampling, digestion of plant tissues, extraction and analysis using mass spectrometry. These methods are time-consuming, require extensive sample processing, and often involve the use of cumbersome and expensive instrumentation. SMART DiSTAP’s new method of coupling nanoparticle sensors with plants’ natural ability to efficiently extract analytes through roots and transport them enables real-time detection of arsenic uptake in living plants with portable and inexpensive electronic devices, like a portable Raspberry Pi platform equipped with a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera, similar to a smartphone camera.
The co-author, DiSTAP principal investigator and MIT Professor Michael Strano added, “This is an extremely exciting development, as, for the first time, we have developed a nanobion sensor capable of detecting arsenic, a serious contaminant environmental and potential threat to public health. With its myriad advantages over old arsenic detection methods, this new sensor could change the rules of the game, as it is not only more time-efficient, but also more accurate and easier to implement than previous methods. to help plant scientists in organizations like TLL further produce crops that resist the absorption of toxic elements. Inspired by TLL’s recent efforts to create rice crops that absorb less arsenic, this work is a parallel effort to further support SMART DiSTAP’s efforts in food safety research, constantly innovating and developing new technological capabilities to improve Singapore’s food quality and safety. “
The research is conducted by SMART and supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore as part of its Campus for Research Excellence And Technological Enterprise (CREATE) program.
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