Firefly protein enables visualization of roots in soil
Wednesday, August 19, 2015 - 18:00
in Earth & Climate
This is a composite image of a growing experimental mustard plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, along with a luminescence-based image of the root system of the same plant. Plants form a vast network of below-ground roots that search soil for needed resources. The structure and function of this root network can be highly adapted to particular environments such as desert soils where plants like Mesquite develop tap roots capable of digging 50 meters deep to capture precious water resources. Excavation of root systems reveals these kinds of adaptations but is laborious, time consuming, and does not provide information on how growing roots behave.