Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's the miraculously human-enhanced, bionic super leaf!
Beating nature at its own game is the story of the human race: we overcame gravity and flew to the Moon; we made mice grow ears on their backs; we even bettered the mighty earthquake by killing thousands of people with atom bombs. And now, reports the New Scientist, it looks like we're about to create a 'super-photosynthesizing leaf that will produce more leaf matter, using less solar energy and fewer nutrients'.
So is the dawn of the bionic leaf upon us? A leaf that will better nature's own 'poor' attempts at photosynthesis? No. Though I'm no scientist myself, it seems that all researchers at the University of Illinois have done is create a computer model of how a leaf works, fiddled with numbers to alter its constituent parts and noted the outcome.
Like I say, I'm no scientist, but isn't it a bit like running a computer model of the London Underground, taking out half of the commuters and announcing that it runs more smoothly. No, probably not.
We've never, to my knowledge, been able to grow an ear on the back of a mouse. We have, however, molded cartilage in ear-shaped molds and then implanted said cartilage inside the body of a mouse, just underneath the skin. It's called the 'Vacanti Mouse' experiment.
Posted by: MandyPandy | November 29, 2007 12:04 PM