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I believe that the secret to producing
extremely drought tolerant crops,

2
00:00:05,178 --> 00:00:08,460
which should go some way
to providing food security in the world,

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00:00:08,460 --> 00:00:11,202
lies in resurrection plants,

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00:00:11,202 --> 00:00:14,372
pictured here, in an extremely
droughted state.

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00:00:14,372 --> 00:00:17,196
Now you might think
that these plants look dead,

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but they're not.

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Give them water,

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and they will resurrect, green up,
start growing, in 12 to 48 hours.

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00:00:26,624 --> 00:00:28,160
Now why would I suggest

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that producing drought tolerant crops
will go towards providing food security?

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Well the current world population
is around 7 billion.

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And it's estimated that by 2050,

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we'll be between 9 and 10 billion people,

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with the bulk of this growth
happening in Africa.

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The food and agricultural
organizations of the world

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have suggested that we need
a 70 percent increase

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00:00:51,713 --> 00:00:54,022
in current agricultural practice

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to meet that demand.

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Now given that plants
are at the base of the food chain,

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most of that's going
to have to come from plants.

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Now that percentage of 70 percent

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does not take into consideration
the potential effects of climate change.

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This is taken from a study by Dye
published in 2011,

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where he took into consideration


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all the potential effects
of climate change

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and expressed them --

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amongst other things --

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increased aridity due to lack of rain
or infrequent rain.

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Now the areas in red shown here,

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are areas that until recently,

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have been very successfully
used for agriculture,

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but cannot anymore
because of lack of rain fall.

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This is the situation
that's predicted to happen in 2050.

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Much of Africa,

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in fact much of the world,

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is going to be in trouble.

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We're going to have to think of some
very smart ways of producing food.

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And preferably among them,
some drought-tolerant crops.

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The other thing to remember about Africa

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is that most of the
agriculture is rainfed.

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Now making drought-tolerant crops
is not the easiest thing in the world.

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And the reason for this is water.

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Water is essential to life on this planet.

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All living, actively
metabolizing organisms,

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from microbes to you and I,

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are comprised predominately of water,


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all life reactions happen in water,

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and loss of a small amount
of water results in death.

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You and I are 65 percent water,

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we lose one percent of that, we die.

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00:02:23,952 --> 00:02:27,465
But we can make behavioral
changes to avoid that.

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Plants can't.

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They're stuck in the ground.

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And so in the first instance they have
a little bit more water than us,

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about 95 percent water,

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and they can lose
a little bit more than us,

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like 10 to about 70 percent,
depending on the species,

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but for short periods only.

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Most of them will either try to resist
or avoid water loss.

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So extreme examples of resistors
can be found in succulents,

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they tend to be small, very attractive,

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but they hold onto their water
at such great cost

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that they grow extremely slowly.

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Examples of avoidance of water loss
are found in trees and shrubs.

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They send down very deep roots,

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mine subterranean water supplies,

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and just keep flushing
it through them at all times,

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keeping themselves hydrated.

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The one on the right is called a Baobab,

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it's also called the upside-down tree,

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simply because the proportion
of roots to chutes is so great

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that it looks like the tree
is being planted upside down.

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And of course the roots are required
for hydration of that plant.

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And probably the most common strategy
of avoidance is found in annuals.

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Annuals make up the bulk
of our plant food supplies.

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Up the west coast of my country,

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for much the year you don't see
much vegetation growth.

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But come the spring rains,

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you get this.

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Flowering of the desert.

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Now the strategy in annuals,

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is to grow only in the rainy season.

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At the end of that season
they produce a seed,

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which is dry, eight to 10 percent water,

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but very much alive.

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And anything that is
that dry and still alive,

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we call desiccation-tolerant.

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00:04:04,159 --> 00:04:05,519
Now in the desiccated state,

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what seeds can do
is lie in extremes of environment

90
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for prolonged periods of time.

91
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The next time the rainy season comes,

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they germinate and grow,

93
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and the whole cycle just starts again.

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It's widely believed that the evolution
of desiccation-tolerant seeds

95
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allowed the colonization and the radiation

96
00:04:22,792 --> 00:04:26,872
of flowering plants, 
or angiosperms, onto land.

97
00:04:27,243 --> 00:04:30,749
But back to annuals
as our major form of food supplies.

98
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Wheat, rice and maze form 95 percent
of our plant food supplies.

99
00:04:36,670 --> 00:04:38,342
And it's been a great strategy,

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because in a short space of time
you can produce a lot of seed.

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Seeds are energy-rich so there's
a lot of food calories,

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you can store it in times of plenty
for times of famine,

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but there's a down side.

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The vegetative tissues --

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the roots and leaves of annuals --

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do not have much

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by way of inherent resistance,
avoidance or tolerance characteristics.

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They just don't need them.

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They grow in the rainy season

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and they've got a seed to help them
survive the rest of the year.

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And so despite concerted
efforts in agriculture

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to make crops with improved properties

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of resistance, avoidance and tolerance --

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particularly resistance and avoidance

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because we've had good models
to understand how those work --

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we still get images like this.

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Maze crop in Africa,

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two weeks without rain,

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and it's dead.

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Now there is a solution.

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Resurrection plants.

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These plants can lose 95 percent
of their cellular water,

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remain in a dry, dead-like state
for months to years,

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and give them water,

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they green up and start growing again.

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Like seeds, these are desiccation-tolerant.

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Like seeds, these can withstand extremes
of environmental conditions.

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And this is a really rare phenomenon.

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There are only 135 flowering
plant species that can do this.

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I'm going to show you a video

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of the resurrection process
of these three species

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in that order.

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And at the bottom,

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there's a time axis so you can see
how quickly it happens.

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[Video]

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(Applause)

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Pretty amazing, huh?

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So I've spent the last 21 years
trying to understand how they do this.

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How do these plants dry without dying?

140
00:06:59,351 --> 00:07:02,072
And I work on a variety of different
resurrection plants,

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00:07:02,072 --> 00:07:04,581
shown here in the hydrated and dry states,

142
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for a number of reasons.

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One of them being is that
each of these plants serve as a model

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for a crop that I'd like
to make drought-tolerant.

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So on the extreme top left for example,

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is a grass, it's called
Eragrostis Nindensis,

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it's got a close relative
called Eragrostis Tef --

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00:07:18,890 --> 00:07:20,975
a lot of you might know it as "Tef" --

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it's a staple food in Ethiopia,

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it's gluten-free,

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and it's something we would like
to make drought-tolerant.

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The other reason for looking
at a number of plants,

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is that, as least initially,

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I wanted to find out:
do they do the same thing?

155
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Do they all use the same mechanisms

156
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to be able to lose
all that water and not die?

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00:07:37,530 --> 00:07:40,270
So I undertook what we call
a Systems Biology approach

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in order to get
a comprehensive understanding

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of desiccation tolerance,

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in which we look at everything

161
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from the molecular to the whole plant
ecophysiological level.

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For example we look at things like

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changes in the plant anatomy
when they're dried out,

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and their ultrasctructure.

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We look at the transcriptome,

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which is just a term for a technology

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in which we look at the genes
that are switched on or off,

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in response to drying.

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Most genes will code for proteins
so we look at the proteome.

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What are the proteins made
in response to drying?

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Some proteins would code for enzymes
which make metabolytes,

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so we look at the metabolome.

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Now this is important because plants
are stuck in the ground.

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They use what I call a highly tuned
chemical arsenal

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to protect themselves from all
the stresses of their environment.

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So it's important that we look


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at the chemical changes
involved in drying.

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The last study that we do
at the molecular level

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is we study the lipidome --

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the lipid changes in response to drying.

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And that's also important

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because all biological membranes
are made of lipids.

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They're held as membranes
because they're in water.

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Take away the water,
those membranes fall apart.

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Lipids also act as signals
to turn on genes.

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Then we use physiological
and biochemical studies

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00:08:51,250 --> 00:08:52,783
to try and understand the function

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00:08:52,992 --> 00:08:56,962
of the putative protectants that we've
actually discovered in our other studies.

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00:08:57,427 --> 00:08:59,261
And we use all of that
to try and understand

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how the plant copes
with its natural environment.

191
00:09:03,742 --> 00:09:05,530
Now I've always had the philosphy

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00:09:05,762 --> 00:09:07,875
that I needed a comprehensive
understanding

193
00:09:08,177 --> 00:09:09,942
of the mechanisms of desiccation tolerance

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00:09:10,313 --> 00:09:14,353
in order to make a meaningful suggestion
for a biotic application.

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00:09:15,329 --> 00:09:16,722
I'm sure some of you are thinking,

196
00:09:16,931 --> 00:09:21,226
"by biotic application, so she mean she's
going to make genetically modified crops?"

197
00:09:22,573 --> 00:09:23,804
And the answer to that question is,

198
00:09:24,129 --> 00:09:27,519
it depends on your definition
of genetic modification.

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00:09:27,797 --> 00:09:30,444
All of the crops that we eat today,
wheat, grass and maze,

200
00:09:30,676 --> 00:09:33,138
are highly genetically modified
from their ancenstors,

201
00:09:33,463 --> 00:09:35,227
but we don't consider them "GM"

202
00:09:35,576 --> 00:09:38,478
because they're being produced
by conventional breeding.

203
00:09:39,174 --> 00:09:39,941
If you mean,

204
00:09:40,126 --> 00:09:42,147
"am I going to put resurrection plant
genes into crops?"

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00:09:42,448 --> 00:09:44,190
your answer is yes.

206
00:09:44,399 --> 00:09:47,185
In the essence of time,
we have tried that approach.

207
00:09:47,510 --> 00:09:48,648
More appropriately,

208
00:09:48,973 --> 00:09:50,320
some of my collaborators at UCT,

209
00:09:50,529 --> 00:09:51,875
Jennifer Thomson and Suhail Rafudeeen,

210
00:09:52,247 --> 00:09:53,686
have spearheaded that approach

211
00:09:53,942 --> 00:09:56,055
and I'm going to show you
some data soon.

212
00:09:57,471 --> 00:10:01,209
But we're about to embark upon
an extremely ambitious approach,

213
00:10:01,465 --> 00:10:04,367
in which we aim to turn on
whole suites of genes

214
00:10:04,692 --> 00:10:07,362
that are already present in every crop.

215
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
They're just never turned on
under extreme drought conditions.

216
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I leave it up to you to decide

217
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
whether those should
be called "GM" or not.

218
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I'm going to now just give you
some of the data from that first approach.

219
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And in order to do that

220
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
I have to explain a little bit
about how genes work.

221
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So you probably all know

222
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that genes are made
of double-stranded DNA.

223
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
It's wound very tightly into chromosomes

224
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that are present
in every cell of your body,

225
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
or in a plant's body.

226
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
If you unwind that DNA, you get genes.

227
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And each gene has a promoter,

228
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
which is an on/off switch,

229
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the gene coding region,

230
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and then the terminator,

231
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
which indicates

232
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that this is the end of this gene,
the next gene will start.

233
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Now promoters are not
simple on-off switches.

234
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
They normally require
a lot of fine tuning,

235
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
lots of things to be present and correct
before that gene is switched on.

236
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
So what's typically done
in biotech studies

237
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is that we use an inducible promoter,

238
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
we know how to switch it on.

239
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We couple that to genes of interest,

240
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and put that into a plant

241
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and see how the plant responds.

242
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Now in the study that I'm going
to talk to you about,

243
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
my collaborators used
a drought-induced promoter,

244
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
which we discovered
in a resurrection plant.

245
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Now the nice thing about this promoter
is that we do nothing.

246
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The plant itself senses drought.

247
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And we've used it

248
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to drive antioxidant genes
from resurrection plants.

249
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Why antioxidant genes?

250
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Well, all stresses,
particularly drought stress,

251
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
results in the formation of free radicals,

252
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
or reactive oxygen species,

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which are highly damaging
and can cause crop death.

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What antioxidants do is stop that damage.

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So here's some data from a main strain
that's very popularly used in Africa.

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To the left of the arrow are plants
without the genes,

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to the right --

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plants with the antioxidant genes.

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After three weeks without watering,

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the ones with the genes
do a hell of a lot better.

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Now to the final approach.

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My research has shown

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that there's considerable similarity
in the mechanisms of desiccation tolerance

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in seeds and resurrection plants.

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So I ask the question,

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are they using the same genes?

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Or slightly differently phrased,

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are resurrection plants utilizing genes
evolved for seed desiccation tolerance

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in their roots and leaves?

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Have they re-tasked these seed genes

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in roots and leaves
of resurrection plants?

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And I answer that question,

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as a consequence of a lot
of research from my group

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and recent collaborations from a group
of Henk Hilhorst in the Netherlands,

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Mel Oliver in the United States,

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and Julia Buitink, in France,

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the answer is, yes.

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There is a core set of genes
that are involved in both.

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And I'm going to illustrate this
very crudely for maze,

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where the chromosomes
below the off switch

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represent all the genes that are required
for desiccation tolerance.

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So as maze seeds dried on
at the end of their period of development,

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they switch these genes on.

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Resurrection plants
switch on the same genes

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when they're dried on.

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All modern crops, therefore,

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have these genes
in their roots and leaves,

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they just never switch them on.

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They only switch them on in seed tissues.

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So what we're trying to do right now

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is to understand the environmental
and cellular signals

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which switch on these genes
in resurrection plants,

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to mimic the process in crops.

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And just a final thought.

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What we're trying to do very rapidly,

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is to repeat what nature did
in the evolution of resurrection plants

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some 10 to 40 million years ago.

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My plants and I
thank you for your attention.

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(Applause)