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Podcast: The Future of Everything
Episode: Elizabeth Sattely: Plants are the ultimate chemists
Description: They make a remarkable array of chemicals to survive the world around them. One engineer is using that knowledge to help people live better.
When things aren’t going well for humans and other ambulatory creatures, they simply move on to a new location, a new life. For plants, it’s different, says chemical engineer Elizabeth Sattely, who studies the evolutionary adaptations plants make to survive.
Unable to migrate, plants must make do with the hand that’s dealt them. And sometimes that hand is not very good. The soils where they are rooted can lack nutrients or play host to pat...