TURNING OVER A NEW LEAF

摘要

The next time you groan when it's time to mow your lawn, take a second first to marvel at a blade of grass. Plants are so commonplace that it's easy to take their wizardry for granted. When they absorb sunlight, they immediately squirrel away almost all of that energy by using it to knit together a chemical fuel they use later to grow and multiply. It sounds so simple. Yet it's anything but. Modern society runs on fossil fuels precisely because researchers have never managed to duplicate the chemical mastery of a fescue. Now, with the side effects of our massive-scale use of fossil fuels piling up (climate change, acidified oceans, oil spills, and so on), researchers around the globe are struggling to play catch-up with biology in hopes of harnessing the sun's energy to synthesize gasoline or other fuels that are the bedrock of modern society.