In a surprising development within the field of materials science, researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture have created a kind of cotton that naturally self-extinguishes when set on fire.
And they did it by interbreeding existing lines of cotton, meaning that farmers can grow this cotton without a lengthy approval process. A study describing this new line of cotton was“This is the unexpected cherry on top of a long, fruitful and still ongoing USDA project involving many scientists, years and locations,” Gregory Thyssen, a cotton chemistry researcher at the USDA Agricultural Research Service, told The Daily Beast in an email.
Thyssen and his colleagues bred 11 cotton cultivars together that are naturally proven to be better than other lines at slowing down fire. The cultivars were bred with one another in different combinations and then were self-pollinated to produce hundreds of new cotton lines. From there, researchers grew 257 lines and analyzed the flame-slowing capabilities of the fibers, choosing the 30 best and worst lines to grow the next year, and the five best and worst of those to grow the year after.
The results of the selective breeding spoke for themselves. According to the study, textiles woven from four of the five most flame-retardant lines self-extinguished when set on fire at a 45-degree angle. One of the most flame-retardant lines, and all of the least flame-retardant lines, “were rapidly and completely consumed by flame.”
Moreover, genetic sequencing of these new lines revealed that their superpower didn’t seem to arise from a random mutation or a single gene, but rather a complex interaction that compounded the flame-retardant effects of multiple genetic regions. Because the researchers still have to work out the particulars of this interaction, artificial selection ended up being a more successful approach than adding or removing genes via genetic engineering.
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