有害气体看不见？智能植物帮你忙！
Your favorite succulent just got a little more succulent.
你最爱的多肉植物最近变得更加鲜嫩动人咯！
Inspired by smoke detectors and smart home monitors, scientists are genetically engineering houseplants to sense harmful chemicals from mold and other kinds of fungi—and alert homeowners to their presence.
受到烟雾报警器和智能家庭监控器的启发，科学家们正用基因工程开发室内植物，来检测来自霉菌和其他真菌的有害化学物—并提醒屋主注意它们的存在。
If they can figure out how houseplants respond to other threats, such as radon and airborne pathogens, researchers could one day engineer “smart plants” to tackle a whole host of problems.
如果他们能测出室内植物是如何对这些威胁，作出反应的，比如氡和空气中的病原体，那么研究者们将来有一天就可以设计出“智能植物”来解决一系列的问题。
The idea has already been tested on the farm, researchers write in a review published today in Science.
该理念已经在农场上得到了测试，研究者们在今天发表的《科学》杂志上的一篇综述里写道。
From 2012 to 2013, plant scientists modified tobacco plants (Arabidopsis thaliana) to produce excessive amounts of orange fluorescent protein when they encountered disease-causing bacteria.
从2012到2013年，植物科学家们对烟草 (拉丁学名Arabidopsis thaliana)进行了修饰，使其在遇到致病细菌时合成大量的橙色荧光蛋白。
To do so, researchers first identified the genes in the tobacco plant genome that were likely to react to harmful airborne chemicals known as volatile organic compounds.
为了实现这一目的，研究员们首找到了可能会对有害的空气中的化学物进行反应的烟草，比如挥发性有机物，然后对其基因组的基因进行了修饰。
Then, they inserted synthetic “promoters” into the plants’ DNA to crank those reactions up to 10.
然后，他们将一段合成的“促进子”插入植物的DNA中来使这样的反应最大化。
When the engineered plants sensed the bacteria, their cells reacted by pumping out the orange fluorescent protein.
当这种基因工程修饰过的植物感应到细菌时，它们的细胞就会通过泵出橙色荧光蛋白来作出发应。
To detect the signal, farmers simply had to put on light-filtering goggles and see whether the plants glowed orange under a green light, the researchers reported previously in Plant Biotechnology Journal.
为了检测信号，农民们只需要带上有滤镜的护目镜来看看植物是否会在绿色滤镜下发出橙色光就可以了，研究员们之前在《植物生物科技》杂志上发表了结果。
做一只会思想的芦苇
That technology could soon move inside the home, say reviewers, where “living walls” of genetically modified plants could be installed near air vents, where they might one day be able to sense toxic mold growth and airborne viruses, like the flu. Right now, just like the tobacco plant, they would have to be illuminated to see the signal, in this case with ultraviolet light. Scientists hope to soon discover proteins in houseplants that could produce a signal visible to the naked human eye.
植物生物科技杂志
That technology could soon move inside the home, say reviewers, where “living walls” of genetically modified plants could be installed near air vents, where they might one day be able to sense toxic mold growth and airborne viruses, like the flu.
这项技术很快就可以转移到室内来，评论者们说，在室内，经过基因修饰的“活体植物墙”可以被安装在通风口附近，在哪里它们将来也许可以感应到有毒真菌的生长以及空气传播的病毒，比如流感病毒。
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