Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have grown wood-like plant cells, which could potentially open the door to a more efficient and eco-friendly production of wooden products.
According to MIT, the team have achieved this partly thanks to withdrawing cells from the leaves of a zinnia plant.
These cells were then placed in a liquid growth medium that allows them to replicate.
Next, the cells were then transferred into a gel, with a mix of two plant hormones added to them – auxin and cytokinin. By adding these hormones, the cells were triggered into producing lignin, which is an organic polymer that provides the firmness and toughness in wood. In result, a wood-like rigid structure was eventually grown.
This is a process that is still in its early days and the team at MIT look to be curious as to whether this experiment would work on other plants as well as the zinnia plant.
“One pending question is: How do we translate this success to other plant species? It would be naive to think we can do the same thing for each species,” said Luis Fernando Velásquez-García, a co-author of the study.
Another co-author of the study, Jeffrey Borenstein, looks further ahead and speculates on the potential of this development.
“There’s an opportunity here to take advances in microfabrication and additive manufacturing technologies, and apply them to solve some really significant problems in the agriculture arena,” said Borenstein.
