they are in fact an ancient Egyptian seed,
going by the name of Moringa oleifera, but
these seeds have one property that other seeds do not have, in ancient Egypt,
people used the crushed seeds of the Moringa tree to clear up
cloudy water, scientists later discovered that a protein in the seeds kills
bacteria by gathering them into clusters which sink to the bottom of the
container,
after and before adding the seeds, in a recent
paper in Langmuir, researchers at Penn State announced
that they'd solved a piece of the puzzle: how the protein kills the bacteria,
it seems to fuse the membranes of the bacteria together, membranes are designed
to protect a cell, so when those defences are breached, it's bad news
for the bacteria, the new research found that the proteins were at their strongest
cleaning ability when harvested as mature seeds during the rainy season,
eventually, the scientists hope that the seeds can be grown and harvested in
areas where they are most needed, other parts of the plant are edible, making
it useful for not only cleaning water, but providing a nutritious source of
food for communities, now here is a question, how did a tree that is
native to the foothills of the Himalayas find it's way to Egypt all of those years ago?
No comments:
Post a Comment