I would like to sketch and make some graphics about this idea of BioSensor plants that change color when they grow over buried land mines.
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Aresa – changing the strategic focus to investments in and development of mine-affected land - still with a humanitarian scope - read the press release
Aresa
has been working within plant biotechnology. The company was founded in
2001 by Carsten Meier, who is presently the Chief Scientific Officer.
Aresa has its scientific outset from the
Institute of
Molecular Biology and Physiology,
Copenhagen
University, that has supported the company since its foundation with consulting, facilities and scientific staff.
By February 2006, Aresa was listed on the First North listing of the Copenhagen Stock Exchange (currently Nasdaq/OMX-group).
Aresa A/S is situated in
Symbion
Science
Park in
Copenhagen. This
Science
Park houses approx. 100 small companies primarily within Biotechnology and IT.
As of January 2008, Aresa has 11 employees.
Aresa has been working on the BioSensor patent protected technology
Since its establishment Aresa has developed plant based technology platforms, and in 2002 we filed two international patent applications.
The
use of the the Company’s BioSensor technology, in the shape of the
product candidates RedDetect, RedDetect UXO and RedScreen have been
selected to be among the most innovative ideas in the World in 2004, by
the New York Times. In 2005, the Company’s Chief Scientific Officer,
Carsten Meier was awarded the Annual Innovation Price of the Carl Bro
Group (Danish Consultancy Firm) for the efforts in developing the
Company’s technology.
For a description af the Mine Action Plant and the technology behind it, please see the Landmine Plant section.
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the first article about this subject found here
XM Satellite Radio: 4/30/06
The Osgood File (CBS Radio Network)
Scientists are engineering plants to change color when they grow over buried land mines.
Left-behind landmines kill or injure about 10,000 people per year
world wide, according to U.S. State Department estimates. Landmines
also keep people from using large expanses of arable land. The United
Nations estimates that nations spend $200 - $300 million each year on
de-mining efforts. Getting rid of the mines is dangerous work; some
crews probe the ground with sticks or rely on metal detectors or dogs
to find the buried mines. A Danish biotech company may have a better
solution: a plant that changes color when it grows over buried mines.
The plant in question is a small weed called Arabidopsis thaliana
or thale cress. One of the most-studied plants on Earth, it is a member
of the mustard family and grows wild everywhere in the world except the
poles. It's an annual plant and a thale cress seed can sprout and grow
into a mature plant in just six weeks. In some regions, there can be
two or three generations in a single summer. In nature the green leaves
turn red in autumn, or when the plant is subjected to stress such as
cold or drought.
Danish biologists Carsten Meier and Simon Østergaard, co-founders of
Aresa Biodetection in Copenhagen, are re-engineering thale cress to
turn red when exposed to the presence of a land-mine in the soil.
Researchers chose natural mutants of the plant that do not turn red in
response to these natural stimuli and then re-engineered the mutant's
genetic make-up so that it turns red only when the roots come in
contact with NO2 (nitrous oxide)—a compound that leaks out of buried
land mines.
So far, the team reports they have produced a plant that changes color
in greenhouse lab experiments where NO2 is applied to the soil in
solution. Aresa says this may be too general a signal (NO2 is often
naturally present in the soil), which means there might be the risk of
false positives, so they are working to make it more selective in its
responses. The next step will be more realistic field trials with
actual land mines (mines that lack detonators, however). In actual
de-mining applications, researchers anticipate that seeds could be sown
over a suspected minefield from an airplane, or spread with a handheld
seed sprayer as workers walk along in de-mined corridors
Sean Burke, Program Manager at the U.S. Humanitarian Demining Research
and Development Program, says the challenge is how high the stakes are.
You have to have a hundred percent detection with the lowest possible
false alarms. He says if you miss one mine that could be somebody's
life.
Some scientists are also concerned that bioengineered plants could
"escape" into the wild and confer undesirable traits on wild plants. In
response Aresa has taken these concerns into consideration and has
manipulated their plants so they can't sprout unless a growth factor
has been applied to the seeds. In addition, they have created plants
can’t set seeds unless supplied with another growth hormone. In
addition, this plant naturally is a self-pollinator, so it doesn't
cross-pollinate with plants growing wild nearby.
