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Mars Space Biotech Science

Reducing Plant Stress Leads to Martian Farms 152

Posted by Zonk from the nothing-that-eats-people,-please dept.
Saint Aardvark the Carpeted writes "NASA is looking for ways to get plants to grow on Mars -- and surprisingly, reducing their stress is a good first step. By splicing genes from Earth-bound extremophiles into seeds whose descendants are destined for the red planet, scientists hope to breed plants that can handle the wide range of temperatures (pdf) that will be found on Mars."
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Reducing Plant Stress Leads to Martian Farms More

Reducing Plant Stress Leads to Martian Farms

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  • for some martain chronic, JEAH BOI!

  • Gibberish (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Is it just me or did that summary look like complete gibberish?
    • Regardless of the factualoty of the article in question, the use of Comic Sans in the diagrams does not instill much hope.
    • Maybe it would make more sense if the summary had within it this question?

      Yeah, but can the martian plant's run Linux?

      Maybe it didn't make as much sense because it had little to do with computers or censorhip... Topics that seem to dominate slashdot (not a complaint, just a statement of fact).
    • I don't know, it looked like a perfectly crumpulent paper to me.
      • Crum pu lent: as in needing to be crumpled, round file (the garbage can) or otherwise dispose of.

        Not to be confused with Subgenius Ranting.

        Also refered to as;
        Spam in paper form.
        Drunken ranting
        Meaningless usenet posting
        Slashdot article
    • No it's just not a very good article. How about before working out how to grow plants on Mars, those scientists work out how to actually get people to Mars, or even the Moon. Or even a reusable spaceship which isn't falling to bits.
      • Um, given the zillion ways that a mars mission currently could/would become a death-trap, I think that
        1. doing this research, then
        2. launching a few unmanned craft that plant usable stuff on part of Mars

        seems a helluva lot easier than the prospect of watching/hearing the next Niel Armstrong whisper his dying words from 100M miles away.

        (now, let me my science and ethics hats back on, since I took 'em off to completely ignore the 'but what about the bad science or bad ethics of lazily overwriting an entire p

  • I heard that singing to plants helps thenm grow and reduce their stress levels. Now all we need to do is to perform some experiments and figure out what type of singing/music genre provides the best stress relief. I'm thinking reggae would do the trick personally... >_>
    • Something more along the lines of this came to mind:

      Little flower, I see
      You know the very place you must be
      Right there, blooming at my feet
      Perfect and complete
      Innocent and bright
      Each day you give yourself to the light

      You sway in any gentle wind
      And you bring such pleasure to my eyes
      You drink your fill of summer rain
      And I know this vision will not die
      Watching you bloom peacefully
      Sweet little flower
      You know where you must be

      Little flower, I pray
      That I may be like you one day
      So pure, the eart
    • I'm thinking reggae would do the trick personally...

      Yes! Certain varieties of cannabis are very hardy. We could crash a satellite full of genetically-modified extremophile marijuana seeds on Mars. Then, when we finally get people there, paradise will surely await them! Brilliant! Sign me up!

      • Re:Solution doesn't need to be scientific... (Score:4, Funny)

        by ediron2 ( 246908 ) * on Saturday August 06, 2005 @08:21PM (#13261240) Journal
        I'm thinking reggae would do the trick personally...

        Yes! Certain varieties of cannabis are very hardy. We could crash a satellite full of genetically-modified extremophile marijuana seeds on Mars. Then, when we finally get people there, paradise will surely await them! Brilliant! Sign me up!

        ... and the astronauts won't care if they're stranded.

        ... and astronaut-volunteer rates will soar.

        ... ensuring mars will *never* attack us.

        ... the planet's residents will promptly petition for a namechange, from Mars to Eros.

        ... upon the colonial-ship's arrival, all communication stops abruptly. When it restarts, only two words come to Earth, repeated ad infinitum: "Send Munchies!"

        ... a haze quickly forms planetwide, CO2 levels soar, greenhouse effects kick in, and Martians-For-Global-Warming cheers lazily.

        ... Bob Marley's headstone takes off earth, self-propelled, and navigates toward Mars. Very 2001, mon.

    • You should check out SonicBloom. http://www.sonicbloom.com/ [sonicbloom.com] They sell a foliar feed mixture that works best with a CD playing that they give with the fertilizer. The CD has a bunch of soft music playing with a constant high pitch noise that sounds a lot like a squeaky swamp cooler or crickets chirping. They have supposedly done some research with that sound and its effects on the stomata on the plants. Supposedly that sound will stimulate the plant to open the stomata wider than normal and absorb more fo
    • Thats because you exhale co2 and speed up the plants metabolisim because it just absorbed the co2 from your breath. This could possibly hurt a weak or diseased plant even more since the plants metabolisim is sped up. So any disease or nutrient difficiences will show up quicker.

      Also plants produce Co2 at night and since Mars has high co2 levels we would have to design a plants that gives of less co2 at night?

      Or even better if we could clone some prehistoric plants they might grow better on Mars since ea

      • Should also add that plants absorb oxygen through the roots. They will up take as much as you can supply it to them. To experiment take a fish tank airpump with and airstone, fill a bucket with water and submerge most of the roots in the water. Leave some of the root out as you coudl drown the plant. You'll see that the plant grows fine and it grows a humongous root system.
    • they actually performed an experiment with plants growing next to a boombox. The ones growing to hip-hop did the best ... that'd probably be a fairly cheap way to destress the plants over there. bring a bunch of hip-hop cd's to mars and play them 24-7 for the martian plants to under. :)
    • reggae? smoking the plant doesn't help it grow
    • Of course, anybody who's trying to teach their plants to meditate has probably been smoking some of them first...
  • ...splintering the first 100 and causing the transntaionals to crack down. And don't get me started on the great Earth flood. I think stressed out plants on Red Mars (or Green Mars or Blue Mars) is the least of our worries...

  • Kudzu (Score:5, Funny)

    by Reverend528 ( 585549 ) on Saturday August 06, 2005 @03:58PM (#13259833) Homepage
    We should send a bunch of kudzu to mars. That stuff will grow anywhere.

  • possible priority question? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CdBee ( 742846 ) on Saturday August 06, 2005 @03:58PM (#13259834)
    I'm not criticising.. but surely research into plants that can take extremes is of more short-term utility in creating species which can suck up and withhold pollutants as part of a clean-up operation for Earth than in sustaining the "great-post-armageddon-earth-bug-out" destination?
    • "...but surely research into plants that can take extremes is of more short-term utility in creating species which can suck up and withhold pollutants as part of a clean-up operation for Earth"

      Who's to say the research won't find its way in that direction? It's not NASA's job to rid the world of pollution. Funny thing about research is that the more diverse it gets, the bigger toolbox this civilization has to fix other problems.
      • Who's to say the research won't find its way in that direction?

        Exactly. Towards the end of the first section the article says: "To our knowledge, this is the first report describing the production of an archaeal protein in plants." So, there work is a starting point, or a peice of basic research, that could go off in a multitude of directions. It looks like the Mars angle keeps it interesting as 1) a starting point to look for investigative angles, and 2) a way to keep things interesting in an under g

    • I'll make sure to get your suggestion to the single scientist working in this obviously neglected field of study.
    • See, it is actually possible for 6 billion people to focus on more than 1 thing in total.... And besides, if you RTFA, you might have noticed some of the other uses for their work: Breeding plants that can handle more extreme conditions on earth, such as surviving longer in drought stricken areas. I think the people living in sub-Saharan Africa for instance would put that as far higher priority than withholding pollutants.
      • This is a significant article - in 100 years time it could well be one of the first postings on the net for the creation of forests that now carpet mars ( ok these forests may consist of large purple leathery leafed things 2 cm high - but forest sounds much more interesting).

        Not to mention the fact that in 400 years time we live in bioengineered tree houses and 75% of our food is grown in the ocean - as this has the least deleterious impact on the environment.

        This is a tremendously exciting direction for re
    • I'd like to talk to you about your sig but there isn't any other way to contact you but this one. Sorry everybody...
    • You must be of the "let's merge KDE and GNOME" camp.
    • I'm not criticising.. but surely research into plants that can take extremes is of more short-term utility in creating species which can suck up and withhold pollutants as part of a clean-up operation for Earth than in sustaining the "great-post-armageddon-earth-bug-out" destination?

      I'm not criticising ... but that isn't the job of NASA.

      As far as what you are talking about, it is called phyto-remediation and is done by *gasp* companies/agencies that specialize in cleanup activities. Do some searches [google.com] on phy

  • Mars Hills Are Green... (Score:3, Funny)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Saturday August 06, 2005 @03:58PM (#13259839)
    Plants will grow if their stress levels are reduced while astronauts die from being exposed to cosmic radiation [slashdot.org]. Somebody must love plants.

  • stress affects humans too!?!? (Score:3, Funny)

    by myowntrueself ( 607117 ) on Saturday August 06, 2005 @04:00PM (#13259854)
    If this stress thing applies to people too... how are they going to have any IT staff on Mars?

  • Cold tolerance (Score:5, Interesting)

    by demachina ( 71715 ) on Saturday August 06, 2005 @04:01PM (#13259855)
    I think if you are engineering life for Mars you need to be developing cold tolerance, more than heat tolerance which is what this experiment seems to be doing. The concept is the same but you have to wonder why they they made their choice of extremeophiles. The averge surface temperature on Mars is around -55C. The hottest you see is 27C which is a very warm summer day. Developing tolerance for 4-100C doesn't quite fit.

    You wonder why they aren't working with extremeophiles from the Arctic, Antarctic and high mountains instead of ocean vents.
    • I think the point is the range of temperatures it can handle. Perhaps the available extremeophiles from cold areas aren't capable of surviving over as large ranges, and perhaps they believe it is easier to later extend the range downward than expand the range of the other available extremeophiles.
    • They probably first attempted to get funding for breeding plants which can survive in earth deserts(which could, you know, feed people), but that line of justification didn't have enough cachet.

      So they went to NASA, cuz they'll fund anything.

    • Valid question, and we could also ask why the tobacco plant was used instead of something edible, but the heat tolerance was just the first phase. It was purely meant as a proof of concept that an extremophilic gene of any kind could be introduced to a plant without killing it due to any toxicity. They were successful. As a double-bonus, you may be able to grow tobacco in Texas now, though you may want to look up the property values in hell first.

      That being said, and as I'd rather be insightful than fu

    • Well, actually, if they grow the plant in a greenhouse on Mars then the ambient temperature will be pretty high. The sunlight on Mars is not filtered or blocked by a strong atmosphere and, just like greenhouses here on Earth, the energy will be mostly trapped inside. They can control the temperature by exposing un-insulated portions of the greenhouse to the cold outside (~-40 deg C in sunlight).

      The biggest difficulty is getting enough water.

      -Howard

      • Well I guess that is a good explanation but reinventing biology to solve this seems a bit strange. I would think you could:

        You could probably build infrared filters to block the heat. This has been done in greenhouse on Earth though not sure how hard it is or would be to do on Mars and you need a way to regulate the filtering since you really need some of the heat there.

        Not sure I would go to Mars without a couple nuclear power plants so there would be plenty of power for air conditioning and heating.

        The
        • Well, true, but there's a lot more than temperature resistance that could be engineered into plants.

          The biggest benefit would be to reduce the dependency on certain nutrients that may be scarce on Mars. Things like nitrates, sulphates, etc that would be difficult to bring along in sufficient quantities.

          I think nuclear power is a clear necessity, but it has (so far) been a political brick wall. Absolutely no space ship has so far used nuclear fission. The fear is that the space ship will explode and rain dow
          • Absolutely no space ship has so far used nuclear fission.

            Wrong, quite a few Soviet [wikipedia.org] and at least one US satellite have had true fission reactors on board. On a more nitpicky side, the natural decaying used by RTG's is fission as well.

            At least three of those Soviet reactors have fallen back to Earth, and one of those three did rain down radioactive isotopes. Unsurprisingly enough, world didn't end, nor did it turn Canada into uninhabitable wasteland (well, more so than it already was, at any rate).
            • The RTGs (which I mentioned) do not undergo the same reaction that nuclear fission power plants use to generate energy. It's not uranium or plutonium and the output is miniscule in comparison. That's what I meant.

              Unsurprisingly enough, world didn't end, nor did it turn Canada into uninhabitable wasteland

              If people get 10% more radiation than normal, get cancer, and sue the government for $2 billion, then the world won't end, but we'll have sooo much fun dealing with the consequences.
              • The RTGs (which I mentioned) do not undergo the same reaction that nuclear fission power plants use to generate energy. It's not uranium or plutonium and the output is miniscule in comparison.

                The reaction is indeed different and output is miniscule, no doubt about that, but the fuel is plutonium (Pu-238) in vast majority of cases. It's not the same isotope as the bomb/reactor material, however.

                If people get 10% more radiation than normal, get cancer, and sue the government for $2 billion

                Background radiation
    • I really want to believe Mars will be settled in my lifetime, or at least before senility wipes away my appreciation of the event. But I just don't see it happening.
    • Well given that the reasonable expectation is that we'll be using nuclear power on Mars, there will be plenty of very hot water. Combine this with agri-domes which have a natural "greenhouse" effect, it is not unreasonable to see heat being an issue.

      Since they are working on greenhouse oriented crops, it makes sense to target the likely temperatures there, as opposed to the martian atmopshere and "native unprotected" conditions.

      Naturally, reading the article would have led you to that knowledge. ;)

      That's a

      • "Naturally, reading the article would have led you to that knowledge. ;)"

        I read the article and I saw the greenhouse reference, I'm just skeptical that you would engineer plants to solve the problem. IR filters or some form of heat exchanger seemed like better solutions. Keeping something cool really shouldn't be that much of a problem on Mars except in the height of summer at the warmest part of the planet. I think most of the water tends to be near the poles so I suspect you are going to be in cold par
    • (Actually, recent research has shown that it's pretty much useless, except that echinacea tea fits into the "drink lots of hot liquids" set of advice just like hot tap water does.)
  • Otherwise known as the most elaborate and contrived undercover marijuana operation ever.

  • Contaminate? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by CypherXero ( 798440 )
    Wouldn't this contaminate the soil of mars, by introducing lifeforms from another planet? I mean, we still have a lot of research left to do on mars, and I don't think putting plants to grow on mars is going to help at all.
    • Yes, it will. No, that isn't a good reason not to do it.

      *IF* there is life on mars, it's microscopic. We can safely ignore it.
      • True. After all, we're humans. We were created in God's image, and therefore we are better than all other lifeforms. We have the *right* to be arrogant. And anybody who stands in our way is a terrorist.
        • Wrong.

          We're living creatures. So are the microbs. But the way of life is not pacifist acceptance of what comes--it's to seek out new habitats and adapt to them, to spread and survive as best we can.

          There is no moral value in defending microbs. No ethical constraint against colonization of a dead planet.

          • Re:Contaminate? (Score:3, Insightful)

            by coastwalker ( 307620 )
            Well said. I nominate anyone who has scruples about squishing a few inadequate martian microbes with our super strong bio-engineered armour plated vacuum growing mega-sunflowers .. I nominate them for being both spoil sports and as candidates for a Darwin Award.

            No Realy - Having said that it annoys me intensely that the churches taking advantage of our religious memes are so primitive that they havent got much further than a set of worries about 1st centuary Palestinian social mores - when they could be fo
            • Having said that it annoys me intensely that the churches taking advantage of our religious memes are so primitive that they havent got much further than a set of worries about 1st centuary Palestinian social mores

              Trust me--if you can say that, you haven't had a very through religious education.

              The most popular religions in America today have a thoroughly modern list of opinions, and a view that is remarkably different from that of 1st century Israel. (this was pre-diaspora, remember?)
    • This program is likely going to take years. It's not like they're ready to start shipping seeds tomorrow...
      • ...in the meantime, we should be able to learn everything there is to know about Martian life. Perhaps we will learn one of the following:

        1. There is none.
        2. It is not resistant to invasive species.

    • I kind of agree. What if we don't make it there for a few hundred more years yet? Could something like this allow biological agents like viruses, bacteria, etc to evolve into forms we won't have a natural defense for once we actually do arrive in person?
    • Great, the red mars movment is already starting.

    • I'm sorry you're not comfortable with your position at the top of the food chain.

      But this really is something you have to deal with yourself. You could go swimming with sharks or play with a tiger, for example.

      The rest of us have work to do, you know, like ensuring our survival. Sometimes that means skipping over things that we'd like to do to get things we need to do done.

      If it makes you feel any better, think of these plants as a new place for Martian microbes to live and feed.
  • How could we possibly want to live in a planet filled with holes from meteorites? That's the question!
    • By building a titanium dome/bubble, from the raw materials found there, using sunshine/present nukular minerals as an energy source. This tripple layer titanium dome with spring loaded fish-scales, just like your matress has it, will bounce off most meteorites hitting it, since the atmosphere is too thin to burn them the big meteorites up. If you are unlucky that a really big meteorite falls on your dome, well, tough luck. You can't live life by never taking a walk outside, in fear of getting hit by lightni

  • Just come to Ottawa (Score:5, Funny)

    by pcb ( 125862 ) <peter.c.bradley@gma i l . c om> on Saturday August 06, 2005 @04:12PM (#13259900) Homepage
    scientists hope to breed plants that can handle the wide range of temperatures that will be found on Mars.

    Just come to Ottawa (Canada). Minus 35 C in the winter, plus 35 C in the summer! And I see corn growing across the street. Why am I living here again...might as well move to Mars.

    PCB
  • They should start with apple(not Apple). After all, they too deserve their own sin.
    • Or, from another religious point of view, their own seed of life?

      Don't want to start a huge argument over this but please... don't drag religion into this. Unless you are going to make fun of it. Then it is funny and ok to do so.

  • Let the Terra Forming begin, what is the idea behind this? Are the plants going to release oxygen?
    I 'm curious about this but I know nothing about the subject someone please enlighten me.
    • Let the Terra Forming begin, what is the idea behind this?

      Plants are the source for all life here on earth in every way: the water, the air, food, and raw energy. You kill all the animals on the planet, life continues. Kill all the plants: life will end. We (and all other animal life) are dependent in every way on plants.
  • Have plants, but the air will stay to thin to breath anyway. Harvest oxygen from outside air to live under domes, or hope to find that alien air making machine buried under a mountain (to be activated by Arnold only).
  • > food, oxygen, companionship and a patch of green far from home.

    1,2,4 are a given...but companionship?

    Come on, plants are just plain ordinary. I'd much rather live with a pet martian rock than a pet plant!
    • ever lived in your own apartment? potted plants are most of the companionship many people get. and it's good for your mental health to be nurturing something. no sarcasm here, btw.
      • > ever lived in your own apartment? potted plants are most of the companionship many people get. and it's good for your mental health to be nurturing something.

        Yes, and no one on this floor has a plant AFAIK. In fact, AFAIK there are no plants in the entire building.

        Can't computers be `nurtured' ? I sort of feel healthy every time I upgrade a component or apply the latest security updates ;)
  • Your local dope dealer will be pushing Martian "Red" and saying "Yhis shit is out of this world."
  • Okay, so with these genes the plants won't shut down due to stress and will continue to grow anyway. But how fast can you expect any plant to grow at -20C or lower, or with hardly any atmosphere?

    • Re:Growth rate? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Quadraginta ( 902985 )
      I think you're confusing basic research with late-stage technology. Your concerns are not trivial, but the fact that they haven't been addressed in the pre-alpha stage of the basic research isn't very important, or interesting.

      They're at very early stages, here. They're just trying to stick extremophile bacteria genes in a plant to see if they can use these genes to tailor the plant's genome at all. You have to understand this is a pretty radical mixture of genes. You're trying to cross a soybean with a
      • Plants need oxygen too. On earth, they produce more oxygen than they consume, but they still need to be submerged in a sea of oxygen to function. If all the oxygen they produced was sucked away by osmotic pressure, the plants would die pretty quickly. Or did you think plants made glucose for you.
      • Hey, just the kind of reply I was hoping for! :-) Very informative.

        "...you're confusing basic research with late-stage technology."

        Yeah, but the researchers must have some idea of how they plan to tackle those problem, or else why bother?

        "... Temps on Mars are above freezing for plenty of hours in the year."

        Really? I thought it was always below freezing on Mars. How far above 0C can it possibly get and for how long? Also, a PPCO2 of over 7 mbar is indeed a lot higher than here on Earth, but i
  • Taken from the "Mars University" episode. Fry: Very impressive. Back in the 20th century we had no idea there was a university on Mars. Farnsworth: Well back in those days Mars was just a dreary, uninhabitable wasteland, uh much like Utah. But unlike Utah, it was eventually made livable, when the university was founded in 2636. Leela: They planted traditional college foliage: ivy, trees, hemp. Soon the whole planet was terraformed. Fry: Does that mean it's safe to breathe the air?


  • If you want to reduce their stress, don't send them to Mars!

  • The technology is only going to be useful if robust nanotechnology is *impossibly hard* -- Why? Because if it is possible it is highly probable that Mars *will not exist*.

    Why? Because the probable time to disassemble Mars is 12 hours once the asteroids have been developed into an array to harvest the entire solar power output of the sun. [1]

    So any work to "develop" Mars is either (1) assuming that nanotechnology is impossible -- which seems to fly in the face of physical laws as well as much NASA fund

    • Does anyone else have a question mark above their head after reading this?
    • Here is the first result from the new Martian Canibus...
    • You seem to suggest that creating a Dyson sphere is possible in the same timeframe as very early terraforming...given that we don't have any tech. capable of the kind of thing you're talking about, but that we do have genetic splicing for extremophile organisms, I think you're optimistic.

      More on Dyson spheres:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere [wikipedia.org]
    • There are a few things you need to realize.

      First, Moore's law is not a law. It is a damn good correlation. It has held true so far, but things are about to start getting funky in the world of transistors. That isn't to say that we will not overcome it, but I wouldn't be surprised to find Moore's law get broken in one direction or the other in the next 20 years when we really start to enter the world of quantum mechanics.

      Second, I am guessing you are a Kurzweil fan. The thing you need to realize about Ku

    • I think on the balance Mars is of more use as an alternate or additional habitat than as raw material, unless you're assuming that by then we'll already be working on a Dyson sphere (or ring).

      Mercury, Venus, the moons of Jupiter all seem better candidates for raw materials than Mars... though the Asteroid belt is obviously the first choice.

      Of course, afore we go removing any planets, we might want to spend a little time on Gravity and Resonance first, just to comfort ourselves.
  • Until we get some beneficial soil-based baterias introduced, no root-based plants can take life on Mars unless potted.

    Maybe, those 1000-year old pine tree (Joshua) may cut it in such a hostile environment (takes a little potted soil to get it started altho).

    Mosses, popping misteltoes, and fungus have the best anchor in such a hostile environment.
  • hemp
  • One would think that the earth has good enough weeds already. Just take some dandelion seeds to Mars. I'm sure they will grow beautifully...
  • Just throw a bunch of weeds and other plants up there and see if any adapt and survive? If not, we'll then we've got some organic material to try to plant then next batch in. ;-)

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