A team of Australian scientists has discovered a gene in a "magical" plant that will open the door for space-based food production, especially Professor Peter Waterhouse, a plant geneticist at the Queensland University of Technology, discovered the gene in the ancient Australian native tobacco plant Nicotiana benthamiana -- known as Pitjuri to indigenous Aboriginal tribes.
He made the discovery while tracing the history of the Pitjuri plant which, for decades, has been used by geneticists as a model plant upon which to test viruses and vaccines.
"This plant is the 'laboratory rat' of the molecular plant world. We think of it as a magical plant with amazing properties," he said in a university statement.
"By sequencing its genome and looking through historical records, we have been able to determine that the original plant came from the Granites area near the Western Australia and Northern Territory border, close to where 'Wolf Creek' was filmed," he explained.
By using a molecular clock and fossil records, the team found that this particular plant has survived in its current form in the wild for around 750,000 years.deeper human missions, including to Mars.
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