Science is cool

Biologists have created plants that can extract toxins from groundwater and then metabolize them into harmless substances.

Genetically modified poplar trees in Doty's lab sucked 91 percent of the toxin trichloroethylene from a liquid solution. Natural plants were only able to remove 3 percent of the toxin, which is the most common ground water contaminant in the United States.

The genetically modified plants in the study were grown in vials and were just several inches tall. But these tiny plants were able to metabolize the pollutant into harmless byproducts 100 times faster than the natural plants.