Plant discovery could lead to growing food in space

Researchers have discovered a gene in an ancient "magical" Australian native tobacco plant that may pave the way for growing food in space.
Professor Peter Waterhouse, a plant geneticist at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), discovered the gene in the plant Nicotiana benthamiana, known as Pitjuri to indigenous Aboriginal tribes.
Waterhouse made the discovery while tracing the history of the Pitjuri plant, which for decades has been used by geneticists as a model plant upon which to test viruses and vaccines.
"This plant is the 'laboratory rat' of the molecular plant world, we think of it as a magical plant with amazing properties," he said.

"We now know that in 1939 its seeds were sent by an Australian scientist to a scientist in America and have been passed from lab to lab all over the world," Waterhouse said.
"By sequencing its genome and looking through historical records we have been able to determine that the original plant came from the Granites area near the Western Australia and Northern Territory border, close to where Wolf Creek was filmed.

"We know, through using a molecular clock and fossil records, that this particular plant has survived in its current form in the wild for around 750,000 years," he said.

Lead researcher Dr Julia Bally said determining the exact species had led researchers on a quest to find out how the plant managed to survive in the wild for such a long period of time.
"What we found may have a big impact on future plant biotechnology research. We have discovered that it is the plant equivalent of the nude mouse used in medical research," Bally said.
"The plant has lost its "immune system" and has done that to focus its energies on being able to germinate and grow quickly, rapidly flower, and set seed after even a small amount of rainfall.

"Its focus is on creating small flowers but large seeds and on getting these seeds back into the soil in time for the next rain," Bally said.
"The plant has worked out how to fight drought - its number one predator - in order to survive through generations," she said.
Waterhouse said scientists could use this discovery to investigate other niche or sterile growing environments where plants were protected from disease - and space was an intriguing option.
"So the recent film The Martian, which involved an astronaut stranded on Mars growing potatoes while living in an artificial habitat, had a bit more science fact than fiction than people might think," he said.