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Studios. metal

2:00

out of the earth. Could

2:02

this be a green solution to mining?

2:05

I'm a researcher so I guess

2:07

I'm skeptically optimistic. It's

2:10

Wednesday, June 12th and you're listening to Science

2:12

Friday. I'm Sci-Fi

2:14

producer Rasha Uridi. Plants,

2:16

of course, can suck up water

2:18

and nutrients through their roots, but

2:21

some have evolved to absorb large

2:23

amounts of metals like nickel. And

2:26

scientists are wondering, could we tap

2:28

into that power and use plants

2:30

to mine for metals? We'll

2:32

discuss if and how that could work.

2:35

But first, a humble organism just broke

2:37

the world record for the largest

2:39

genome ever discovered. Here's

2:41

Ira Fladeau. Scientists

2:45

just unearth the largest genome

2:47

of any living thing on

2:49

earth. That means if you split

2:51

open one of its cells, unwound

2:53

the DNA that's coiled up in the

2:55

nucleus, it would stretch out more than 300

2:59

feet. That's taller than the Statue of

3:01

Liberty. Now, what he guesses

3:03

as to whom this giant genome belongs.

3:05

You might be tempted to say maybe

3:07

a complex being like a

3:09

person, a human, or a

3:12

behemoth like a blue whale or a giant

3:14

squid, or maybe your mind went to a

3:16

fancy fungus. No, a study in

3:18

the journal iScience says that the new

3:20

record holder is a fern. Yes,

3:22

a fern found on the island of

3:25

New Caledonia in the southwest Pacific. To

3:27

put it in perspective, one of this

3:29

fern's cells contains more than 50 times

3:32

more DNA than one of ours does.

3:34

Wow. So how did this tiny fern

3:36

end up with a giant genome? And

3:39

what costs? Let's talk about

3:41

it. Joining me is a

3:43

lead author on the study,

3:45

Dr. Jelme Pathera, evolutionary biologist

3:47

at the Botanical Institute of

3:49

Barcelona. Welcome to Science Friday,

3:51

Dr. Pathera. Thank you. It's

3:53

a pleasure for me to be here.

3:55

How excited were you by this discovery?

3:57

Well, we were absolutely star. when we

4:00

found out how big this genome was.

4:03

Actually, you know, scientists have been working

4:05

on this field for a long time

4:07

to expand our understanding of plant genome

4:09

sizes across the tree of life. But,

4:11

I mean, this discovery really, really

4:14

shocked us because we weren't expecting

4:16

something that big. So

4:18

how big is the furring? Describe it for us. Well,

4:21

this furring is very small. It's

4:24

about 10 to 15 centimeters. I don't

4:26

know exactly how many inches it would be

4:28

because, you know... It's like four to six

4:30

inches. Yeah. Yeah. Very, very small plant that

4:32

you would probably... If you were just walking

4:34

on the woods, like not focusing

4:36

on finding this plant, you probably would

4:38

step over it because

4:41

it's like nothing that

4:43

would catch your eye. It has no

4:45

flowers. It's all very green. It's like

4:48

kind of a fishbone structure. It

4:51

doesn't even look like a traditional furring that

4:53

you might have in mind. So how did

4:55

it catch your eye? I

4:57

mean, what made you not step on it? Yeah.

4:59

Well, I've been always interested in plant

5:02

genome size diversity and what are the

5:04

consequences of this trait in evolution of

5:06

plants. So we are

5:08

interested in analyzing giant genomes

5:10

because they are the exception

5:13

of other than the rule. And that's made them very interesting

5:15

to me. Most plants have

5:17

very small genomes and only

5:19

a very few groups of plants

5:21

have giant genomes. One of them

5:23

is Mesopotaris and its sister, genus

5:25

Silotum. So how did this sort

5:28

of small fern end up with

5:30

so much DNA? Well,

5:32

that's a great question. That's a $1 million

5:34

question. We don't know yet. It's

5:37

still actually an unresolved question. What

5:39

is exactly the biological meaning of

5:41

this astounding plant genome size diversity?

5:44

And this extends into how

5:46

exactly plants expand their genomes.

5:49

At first glance, for example, we

5:52

cannot see any particularity or any

5:54

need for this plant to accumulate

5:56

such dramatic amounts of DNA in

5:58

the cells. At least... from

6:00

a functional point of view. You mean

6:02

it doesn't need all that DNA, is

6:04

what you're saying? No, it

6:07

doesn't, because the actual functional DNA,

6:09

which is the one that contains

6:11

decoding protein genes, is

6:13

very small. And it's

6:16

comparable to plants with very small

6:18

genomes, so the rest is repetitive

6:20

DNA, which for a long time

6:23

scientists call like giant DNA, because

6:25

it apparently had no function. Now

6:27

we know it has some roles

6:30

to play, but it's very, very repetitive

6:32

and it's not the main

6:34

function. Right. Well, having such

6:37

a big genome, that's sort of a

6:39

bad thing for a plant, isn't it?

6:41

Yeah, it's mostly a bad thing. And

6:44

this is because there are

6:46

several costs that increase and

6:48

are associated with maintaining a

6:51

functional large genome. And this

6:53

is, for example, the requirement

6:55

for nutrients, for example, nitrogen

6:57

and phosphorus, which are the main essential

7:00

contributors to DNA. A

7:03

plant with a large genome requires lots

7:05

of these elements, and sometimes they are

7:07

not available in the environment. And

7:10

also, for example, every time a

7:12

cell divides, it needs to copy

7:14

the whole strand of DNA. So

7:17

this is a lot of work to

7:19

replicate every time the cell.

7:21

So that slows down their life cycles.

7:24

So this is a puzzle then, about

7:26

why this has so much DNA. It

7:29

is indeed, yeah. We know that most

7:31

plants are very efficient to remove it.

7:33

So all these repetitive DNA sequences that

7:36

populate the genome have, some of them

7:38

have the ability to move around and

7:41

replicate themselves. So the plant,

7:43

even if it doesn't have a brain,

7:45

is very clever. It has a very

7:48

efficient machinery that as soon as these

7:50

elements amplify, they are detected, they are

7:52

labeled, and they are targeted

7:54

and removed from the genome. But we don't

7:56

know yet why in sampling groups these processes

7:58

are not as efficient. Do

8:01

we know why then this plant has

8:03

more DNA than animals, let's say? Oh,

8:05

wow. We don't know yet.

8:07

We don't know yet. It might be that there

8:09

is some sort of selective

8:12

advantage for this fern that

8:14

lives in a very particular

8:16

stable environment restricted to it, and

8:19

it has found the right

8:21

conditions to cope with having such a

8:23

big genome. Does

8:26

this discovery challenge

8:28

anything we know about genomes or

8:30

plant DNA? Well, it

8:32

will definitely. I mean, not just this

8:34

discovery, but it will challenge how

8:37

do we see the structure of the

8:39

DNA in the nuclei, because from a

8:41

DNA sequence point of view, we have

8:44

the technology to produce massive amounts of

8:46

DNA sequences. We have

8:49

the potential, the computational power

8:51

to analyze and assemble probably

8:53

these genomes, but we

8:55

don't know yet how

8:57

the 3D structure of the

9:00

nuclei stands up. What

9:02

are the intimate

9:05

relationships between all

9:07

the molecules that enable the

9:10

integrity of this nuclei to be maintained

9:13

given the vast amount of DNA? And for

9:15

that, we will need high

9:17

microscopy technologies that

9:19

probably will help us understand a bit more,

9:22

because right now we are pretty ignorant about

9:24

the overall structure. How

9:26

is this maintained and regulated?

9:28

Are you just amazed

9:31

that you could have stepped on this fern

9:33

that you didn't and

9:35

missed the whole discovery? If

9:37

I'm honest with you, if I had

9:39

been walking in the woods without looking for

9:42

it, it would have gone missing. And

9:45

this is something I have to acknowledge to

9:47

our New Caledonian colleagues, because they were critical

9:50

contributors to this work, because they showed

9:52

us where these plants grow and

9:54

help us to make this story

9:57

successful. Otherwise it would have been

9:59

unknown. You know, Nobel

10:01

physicist Richard Feynman once talked

10:04

about the beauty of flowers

10:06

and plants and how you might look at

10:08

the outside and love it, but there's

10:10

also a complicated beauty that goes on

10:12

inside the plant that needs to be

10:15

discovered and amazed at also. Yeah,

10:17

and this is the case.

10:19

This very humble plant hides

10:21

a very, very powerful and

10:24

shocking secret in its genome.

10:26

Yeah. Thank you

10:28

very much, and congratulations on finding this.

10:31

Well, thank you very much for reaching out, and

10:33

it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today.

10:36

Thank you, Dr. Jomé

10:38

Payathera, evolutionary biologist at

10:40

the Botanical Institute of

10:42

Barcelona. Hey,

10:47

Ira here with an update that Cephalopod

10:49

Week is just around the corner, and

10:51

it's going to be incredible. Well,

10:54

squitting aside, I'd like to invite you

10:56

to join the Cephalopod Party by sponsoring

10:58

some virtual Cephalopods. Here's what I mean.

11:01

Our talented team of digital producers has

11:03

built a sea of support on our

11:06

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11:08

to sponsor a Cephalopod for just $8.

11:11

With each donation, you'll get to pick from

11:14

one of eight beautifully illustrated sea creatures, which

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we'll post on our site, along

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with your first name and city.

11:21

We're aiming to raise $8,000 here, folks, which

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will go to support all the great work

11:25

we do at Sci-Fry. So we

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do hope you'll consquitter making a gift. Sorry

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for all the puns. We're cracking up over here. Just

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head to sciencefriday.com/sea of support to join

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us and help us reach our $8,000

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goal. Again,

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that's sciencefriday.com/sea of support.

11:44

I'm Ira Flatow, squitting

11:46

you farewell, and thanks. You

11:51

know, typically if soil has high levels

11:53

of metal, plants will either die or

11:55

do everything they can to avoid it.

11:58

But there is another option. evolving

12:00

to be able to safely absorb

12:03

high amounts of the metals. And

12:05

these special plants are called hyper

12:07

accumulators. And their ability

12:09

to suck metals like nickel from the

12:11

earth is called phyto mining. Joining me

12:14

now to talk about these fascinating

12:16

flora and their promise as a

12:18

greener option to metal mining is

12:20

Dr. David McNear, professor of plant

12:22

and soil sciences at the University

12:24

of Kentucky in Lexington. Welcome

12:26

to Science Friday. Hi, Ira. Thanks

12:28

for having me. You're

12:30

welcome. Can you explain how plants

12:33

absorb metal from the soil without

12:35

causing harm to the plant? That's

12:38

a good question, Ira, and actually something that

12:40

we're still trying to figure out. So you

12:42

mentioned, you know, these plants grow in soils

12:44

and they have a couple strategies that they've

12:46

evolved. One of those is to exclude the

12:49

metal. So don't take it up at all.

12:52

And that happens at the plant soil, you know,

12:54

root interface. But the other option is to

12:56

take it up and take it up in

12:58

large quantities. So the mechanisms of that process,

13:01

we're still trying to figure out. Yeah, yeah.

13:03

And where do they store it when they take it

13:05

up? So mostly, you know, they

13:07

store it in the leaves, really in the skin

13:09

of the leaf, if you will. The cells on

13:11

the outside of the leaf, they have these compartments

13:13

like a closet. It's called a vacuole. And they

13:15

take that metal up and they store it in

13:17

those compartments in the leaf. Wow.

13:20

And about how many plant species are actually

13:22

able to do this? There

13:25

are probably upwards of 500 species

13:28

that have been identified and counting.

13:30

That's, you know, hyper accumulate metals. There's

13:32

about 400 of those that are

13:35

described mainly for nickel hyper accumulation. Huh.

13:37

And what are other

13:39

kinds of metals? Yes. So

13:41

you have plants that take up zinc

13:43

and cobalt and arsenic, selenium.

13:46

So there are a variety of plants out there that

13:48

take up a variety of metals. And

13:51

how big are these plants? Are they giant

13:53

trees? What do they look like? So

13:56

generally, the plants that I'm normally working

13:58

on are fairly small. small,

14:00

you know, they might get as high

14:03

as me or waist high. So

14:06

they're not massive plants, they, they, you

14:08

know, they inhabit an environment that's pretty,

14:10

pretty harsh. Many of those are found in

14:13

dry or Mediterranean climates. So they, they're, they

14:15

have to be drought tolerant. So they're not

14:17

huge plants. They're not corn, they're not sorghum,

14:19

or are some of these, you know, grasses.

14:22

Yeah, are they all related species?

14:24

So there's probably 42 different

14:28

plant families that these hyper accumulators

14:30

come from. The main ones are

14:33

brassica type plants, or mustard,

14:35

or you know, rabbitopsis might be a variety

14:37

that you've heard in a lot of

14:39

research that people do. And so

14:41

the, the plants accumulate the nickel or

14:43

the other metal, they store it in

14:46

their leaves. Then how do you,

14:48

how do you go about getting the metal out

14:50

for using it, you know, for

14:52

other purposes? So the agronomy,

14:54

and you mentioned phyto mining, I

14:57

think that the common term now at least was

14:59

coined in 2013 is agro

15:01

mining. So, you know, this

15:04

is the process where you grow plants

15:06

that hyper accumulate metals, you, and

15:08

there's agronomy involved, or the, or the production, you have

15:10

to grow it, you have to harvest it, and then

15:13

you have to extract that metal from the plant. Right.

15:16

So you have to, well, once it's grown

15:18

and harvested, you have to send it out,

15:20

so to speak, to get the metal removed?

15:23

Yeah, it's a pretty neat process. There's a

15:25

couple ways in which you, you know, the

15:27

plant is beneficial in that process. So a

15:29

farmer can go out and bale this, this

15:31

crop of nickel into a bale, a classic

15:34

hay bale, but this is a nickel bale,

15:36

and they can burn that for energy. And

15:39

then they take that ash, that ash that contains now

15:41

about 20% nickel, and

15:43

they can using, you know, refining processes

15:45

that have been developed for rock with

15:47

metal in it, they can then,

15:50

you know, extract the nickel from the

15:52

ash. Did you say that

15:54

the plant is actually 20% nickel? So

15:57

the plant can take up, ideally, for

15:59

a phytomyel. mining or agromining operation, you

16:01

would like that plant to take up 2%

16:03

and some plants take up more. But after

16:05

it's been baled and burnt, the ash that

16:07

comes from that plant can have upwards of

16:09

20% or more nickel in it. And

16:14

this is this is a significant amount? This

16:16

is a significant amount. And the beauty of

16:18

that ash is, you know, it's a plant,

16:20

it's a carbon based life form. So there

16:23

aren't many other impurities in there. Like when

16:25

you when you go and mine rock, you

16:27

have silica and all these other elements that

16:29

you have to try to get rid of.

16:32

But when you burn this plant, and you

16:34

know, it's just carbon and nickel essentially. Right.

16:37

How much energy does it take to do

16:39

mining in a conventional way then do it

16:41

with a plant? Yeah, that's a

16:43

great question. That may be a little bit out

16:45

of my wheelhouse. But I think that is actually

16:47

what has sort of raised

16:49

the interest in Fido mining, particularly from

16:52

the Department of Energy in the US

16:54

is that your current mining and

16:56

extraction processes for mainly low grade ores

16:58

is a pretty energy intensive process. So,

17:01

you know, compared to, I think,

17:04

nickels, the fourth most CO2

17:06

emitted for unit of nickel

17:08

extracted in the mining process that's

17:10

followed, you know, platinum, gold, and then steel,

17:12

and then it's nickel. So they're

17:15

pretty energy intensive processes. Is this

17:17

something that was found

17:20

out recently? Or have we known about this

17:22

for years? So I think

17:25

that the process of or the idea or

17:27

the identification of plants that take up metals,

17:29

I think first occurred in 1945, where they

17:31

identified it a plant where they had a

17:34

whole bunch of nickel in it. The

17:36

term Fido mining or the concept of

17:39

Fido mining was really, I

17:42

guess, brought about in 1983 by some

17:44

researchers at the USDA here in the

17:46

United States. And they proposed this idea

17:49

of metal hypercumulator as a plant species

17:51

to use for soil remediation in that

17:53

case. But then the idea of extracting

17:55

the metal from that plant and

17:58

recovering it. this

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20:33

know that ARPA-E, the federal government

20:35

program that invests in research,

20:37

announced in March up

20:40

to $10 million in funding for more

20:42

phytomining research. To the average

20:44

person that sounds like a lot of money, but

20:47

to researchers it's not a whole lot of money, is it?

20:50

Right across several folks, several

20:53

researchers, it's not, but it

20:55

is nice. As

20:57

someone who did their PhD research

20:59

on metals and soils and hyper-cumulating

21:01

plants and have spent my academic

21:04

career trying to find funds to

21:06

support that research, it's nice to

21:08

see this resurgence of interest in

21:10

plants as a mechanism for extracting

21:12

metals from soils. A

21:15

lot of the impetus from the

21:17

DOE was from the carbon footprint

21:19

of conventional mining, but I think

21:21

a greater impetus for your

21:23

listeners is the batteries and the

21:25

drive that we need more

21:28

of these metals to produce the electric

21:30

power vehicles and electric storage. Huh,

21:32

that's a really interesting point. And my

21:35

question about that, are we

21:37

thinking of whole fields of plant that get

21:39

harvested for the metals in them, or do

21:41

we plant them in areas where there's a

21:43

lot of nickel that we know of is

21:45

in the ground and we want to get

21:47

it out? I think people are thinking

21:49

all of the above. So these

21:52

soils that have a lot of nickel in

21:54

them, if they have been farmed,

21:56

they are typically very low producing

21:59

fields. not very agronomically productive,

22:01

they're not producing much, you know, feed

22:03

or fiber or fuel. If you could

22:05

grow a crop of nickel on those

22:07

soils, that would be great. You have

22:09

to think about there are widely dispersed

22:11

regions across the world that have soils

22:13

that are naturally enriched in metals. Those

22:15

are sensitive environments, they're unique

22:17

environments. I don't think you'd want to go

22:20

plowing over all of these soils and start

22:22

growing nickel in them, but there are some

22:24

places where, again, if they have

22:26

been already put into production

22:28

and they need an alternative thing to

22:30

do on that land, that might be

22:33

an option. But also, I will just

22:35

add that, you know, there have been

22:37

places where there have been contamination around

22:39

smelters or historic mining operations where these

22:41

plants could be employed to help remediate,

22:43

but also remove metals from those soils.

22:46

And is it possible to tweak the genome

22:48

of these plants to make them better miners

22:51

at what they're doing? I

22:54

would say certainly yes. There is a way,

22:57

I mean, that's the science of

23:00

gene editing, I think could certainly play

23:02

a role in this process. There's obviously

23:04

some regulation issues you have to deal

23:07

with down the road. But so little

23:09

focus has been put on metal hyperaccumulation

23:11

as, you know, towards agro mining. I

23:13

mean, we have, if you think about

23:16

it, right, corn used to be a

23:18

wild species that we domesticated and now we

23:20

grow in mass population. So if focus is

23:22

put on, you know, developing either conventional breeding

23:25

or like you're saying, gene editing to get

23:27

a plant that's bigger, that takes up more

23:29

metal, that could be beneficial. But that's part

23:31

of probably what some of these folks who

23:33

are getting this grant are going to look

23:36

at. What about the

23:38

unexpected consequences? I'm sure there

23:40

must be some ecological concerns,

23:43

right, about planting fields of hyper

23:45

accumulators to mine out the metals? No,

23:47

for sure. And, you know, the

23:50

area or the of phytomining

23:53

or as an industry has

23:55

sort of had some fits and starts and

23:57

mistakes, really, where we've taken some folks have

23:59

taken. non-native species and

24:01

started planting them in places where

24:03

there's nickel-rich soils and

24:06

they've escaped, so they become invasive.

24:08

So there are certainly ecological considerations.

24:10

You're also introducing metal from the

24:12

soil now into a plant. So

24:14

what impact does that have then

24:16

on transferring metal to the surrounding

24:18

environment? So there are still a

24:20

lot of questions that need to

24:22

be explored. Good points. But

24:25

you feel optimistic then, though. I'm

24:27

a researcher, so I guess I'm skeptically

24:30

optimistic. I

24:32

mean, about the ability to make a dent. And they

24:34

need to mine so much of this metal from the

24:36

earth, possibly. Yeah, I think it definitely

24:38

could play a role. I mean, I think it

24:40

should play a role in where we're already doing

24:43

surface mining for some of these metals

24:45

that you could have from the tailings. You

24:47

could be growing this plant and also continuing

24:49

the extraction process of nickel from those or

24:52

in regions where smelters or

24:54

refineries have contaminated large areas

24:56

of soil around those facilities.

24:59

You could grow crops of nickel there.

25:02

So, yeah, there are places. And

25:05

they talk about the rare earth metals that are

25:07

needed so much these days. And it's not that

25:09

they're rare, but it's very difficult

25:11

to get them out of the ground and process

25:14

them. Could this be

25:16

one way to do that? Absolutely.

25:18

Yeah. And I think that's

25:20

some of the focus. So we're starting at nickel, which maybe

25:22

is the low hanging fruit of metals because there are so

25:24

many of them. And we have

25:27

some that are well characterized and

25:29

have been deployed. Honestly, there

25:31

are places where they are currently phytopliding, not

25:33

in the United States. But so I think

25:35

that with an eye towards what we can

25:37

learn from this research, learning about the mechanisms

25:39

of metal uptake from soils or when that

25:42

could be applied to, then trying to find

25:44

plant species that are taking up

25:46

and concentrating rare earth elements

25:48

exactly. Well, wow. Fascinating, Dr.

25:50

McNear. Thank you for taking time to be

25:52

with us today. Of course. Thanks

25:54

for having me, Ira. Dr. David McNear, professor

25:56

of plant and soil sciences at the

25:59

University of Illinois. of Kentucky

26:01

in Lexington. That

26:03

wraps up today's episode. Lots of

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folks helped make this show happen,

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26:13

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