It all started more than 15 years ago, when Rusty Rodriguez and Regina Redman, a husband-and-wife team of biologists, went to Yellowstone National Park to study the microbes living in hot geothermal soils. They wanted to understand how living things could survive such extreme temperatures — up to 145 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on the season.
But when they got there, something else surprised them. They found plants thriving in the very same geothermal soil, which geologists had always described as barren, Rodriguez says.
Curious, the couple took samples back to Washington, where they both worked for the US Geological Survey, for analysis. And what they found was a nature-made technology that could replace — or at least supplement — genetic modification in protecting crops from climate change.