Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero / The Daily Beast
Have you ever gone on vacation and forgot to water your plants—only to come back to your home and find them looking like they’re dead—or at least on the utter brink? But after a quick drink they’re suddenly brought back to life, with a strong green color and an arching height once more. Scientists have always been fascinated by the ability of plants to survive months deprived of the necessities to survive, then return to full health almost overnight. In fact, many researchers have been obsessed with the quest to find the miracle gene responsible for enabling this magic act.
It turns out, the “resurrection” gene is not simply one gene, but many. In a new study published in The Plant Journal, a team of scientists from the University of Bonn in Germany and the University of Michigan in the U.S. have unraveled the secret behind how one of these resurrection plants, Craterostigma plantagineum, is capable of surviving months of drought and being revived by just a tiny bit of water. And it turns out, the genes that give the resurrection plant this superpower are widely found throughout many species of plants that don’t even do well in drought.
The findings could point to a way for humans to engineer plants such that these genes can confer drought tolerance to many other plant species of interest, especially critical crops like wheat that will struggle to survive worsened climate change as the century rolls on.