SCIENTISTS in York have discovered that a gene found in the fruit fly can be expressed in a plant to make land contaminated with explosives safe.
The breakthrough could pave the way for millions of hectares of land contaminated by munitions to be cleaned up.
The fruit fly has an enzyme which attaches itself to the TNT molecule and is able to modify it and make it less toxic, not only to the plant itself, but the environment.
Professor Neil Bruce from the University of York’s Department of Biology, said: “What is important about this transformation is that it converts TNT into a product that could be more amenable to being broken down in the environment.
“At the moment there are sites going back to the Second World War which are still contaminated with TNT.
“The next stage would be to demonstrate that the TNT molecules are more biodegradable, but also to put these genes into plant species that could be used in the environment to clean up these sites.”
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