Excerpt:<p><i>some scientists are hopeful that hyperaccumulators could be used to "clean" soil where there has been a build-up of toxic material due to human activity.<p>Other potential applications include phytomining - growing hyperaccumulator plants on nutrient-poor but metal-rich soils to extract the elements they take up.</i>
Here's an informative and entertaining video that explains how the synchrotron light source works and how they use it to image things other tools can't. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16028723" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16028723</a>
Why does no one ever talk about these with respect to Mars? It seems like a research-worthy pursuit to see if we can engineer plants (bacteria?) like this to modify the climate of Mars, or to make artificial superstructures self-sustaining.
Imagine doing a little genetic tinkering to produce a tree that bleeds gold or platinum.<p>Although I _am_ wondering if the three could incorporate enough metal to make increased lightning strikes a survival issue.
<i>"Pycnandra acuminata is a large (up to 20m tall) rare rainforest tree, restricted to remaining patches of rainforest in New Caledonia," says Dr Antony van der Ent</i><p>If ever there was an appropriate name for a tree researcher!<p>This sounds like it could have multiple potential uses, if we can figure it out, and maybe if we can genericise it - Nickel is toxic, but its far from the only metal contaminant . If this could be adapted to, for instance, help process landfill sites, that could be big news.
Could this result in differently coloured amber? I found this [1], but it seems the colouration is due to a different mechanism not involving metals.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_amber" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_amber</a>
> Other potential applications include phytomining - growing hyperaccumulator plants on nutrient-poor but metal-rich soils to extract the elements they take up.<p>Why nutrient-poor? Isn't it enough for them to extract metal?