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We’ve all witnessed the tragedy of apple oxidation: Take a crisp, refreshing bite from a ripe Granny Smith, set it down for a minute or two—and when you return the luscious white flesh has been tinted an offending shade of brown. Well, if you thought the Grapple marked the zenith of apple technology, Western Australia has another surprise: apples that don’t turn brown after they’ve been cut.
Wild bacteria may scoff at our attempts at domination—but in the lab, we’re still in charge. Researchers at Emory University, led by Justin Gallivan, are creating bacteria that will hunt down Atrazine—one of the most widely-used herbicides in the U.S. The chemical has been banned in the E.U., shown to cause birth defects (including hermaphrotization) in frogs and made its way into our groundwater.
