Regenerating Plants and World Hunger

At Tokyo University, Professor Sachihiro Matsunaga and his team of researchers may have determined how to regenerate plant tissue. The idea comes from trying to revert cells from their specialized state known as unipotent cells back to what’s known as pluripotency (think stem cells). The team at Tokyo University tried to reverse these unipotent cells in the plant Arabidpsis thaliana. They modified histone proteins throughout the entire genome and came to the conclusion that once histone is demethylated, this allows for plants to be regenerative.  These histone modifications aimed to demethylate histone H3 by the enzyme LDL3.

According to a separate article on plant regeneration, it’s also possible for plants regenerative capabilities to speeded up as well by supplying hormones. Is it then possible to combine both of these techniques to be able to constantly have plants regenerate tissue? If so, this could open up a ton of possibilities to increase our food supply and hopefully come closer to ending world hunger.

World Hunger May be Brought to an End

World Hunger May be Brought to an End

An international team of scientists believe that our growing population, suspected to be 10 million by 2050, may not be in jeopardy in regards to world hunger. New plant breeding techniques have been discovered that are more productive and environmentally friendly. Most poor and undernourished people are located in rural areas where agriculture is the main source of income as well as food. Not all places have adopted the use of genetic modification on growing plants because of its rocky past with affecting the environment in a negative way. Researchers believe that their newly discovered methods will not only improve their current food production loss due to climate and other factors but also a great increase in environmental safety. If implemented, crop yields would be at their all time high and we just might see the day where no one goes hungry.