Plants that glow in two colours are telling scientists where infection strikes

In a London laboratory, plants have learned to report their own battles. Researchers at the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences engineered a red-shifted version of a fungal luciferase — the chemistry that makes organisms glow — and paired it with a green reporter, so the ratio between two colours becomes a precise measurement rather than a flicker. Published in Nature Plants, the system tracks immune activity around infection sites in living plants over days, using nothing more than photographs taken in the dark — no chemicals, no expensive kit. Group leader Karen Sarkisyan's team hopes such 'sentinel' plants could one day warn farmers of disease early, and the same trick may eventually be adapted to animal disease models.

SDG 15 · Life on land — Mechanism: tech innovation