Breeding mercury-breathing plants for environmental cleanup.

In an elegant study, Richard Meagher's research group has succeeded in introducing a bacterial mercury detoxification pathway into plants. The resulting plants show enhanced mercury tolerance and can convert highly toxic forms of organic mercury to less toxic elemental mercury, which is volatile. The significance of this study is that it could lead to the more efficient and affordable cleanup of environmental mercury pollution, and in a broader context, it proves the power of genetic engineering for phytoremediation.