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Really impressive that a student managed to find something Hofmann suspected nearly a century ago. Makes you wonder how many of these hidden chemists are still quietly working in symbiosis with plants, carrying out complex metabolic processes we haven’t noticed yet.

It also makes me think about how much untapped potential might be hiding in the ordinary plants we pass by every day.

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> It also makes me think about how much untapped potential might be hiding in the ordinary plants we pass by every day.

A ton, which is one selfish reason the genetic diversity collapse is such a negative. In this particular discovery, we already knew there was something interesting about the morning glory plant and it took us decades and decades to find it. To give you an idea how little plant life has been studied, we have sequenced the gnome of less than one thousand species.

Think of the millions of years of evolution as knowledge discovered by non-human species. When we extinct an under-studied species, we don't know what we're losing. It's like burning the Alexandria library without any curiosity about what's inside it.

If a plant species going extinct is like burning a book, then it's a book that might contain medical knowledge that would help millions of people.

Plant genomes are an insane mess.

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