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Hello, Internets past Gray here at a hotel in Denver, Colorado.

Why?

Well, for weeks I've been thinking about tumbleweed, and what started as mild curiosity turned into a lot of reading and a lot of writing and hopefully a video future.

Gray has finished and can put on the screen here now in editing, but for current me, it's still a work in progress.

And as part of that, I came to the research lab here to talk to some of the world experts about why tumbleweed are so troublesome and the work of these professors and their students do at the weed lab.

I'm really excited.

I've run out of people who will talk to me about tumbleweed in real life.

These two exceptions were very susceptible.

This succession, So this is a separate location, totally resistant to the earth.

This kind of stuff we do a lot of that's a photo I took.

That is what happens when a mother plant tumbles in the wind and then the farmer sprays and all of the progeny from this mother plant carried a resistance genes farmer had sprayed.

There will be a tumbleweed all over this, right?

What?

I'm seeing one plant that develop resistance that survived spray.

If he had not sprayed, the whole field would have looked ring.

Let's just walking tour of the facility, by the way, before I get that coffee was, Yeah, that was great.

On the tour, I was able to see my first tumble tots in person and the various tortures.

Weeds are put through at the lab to test their strengths and weaknesses in a variety of ways, particularly cold tolerance that I've got to experience firsthand.

It's crazy how tough weeds, ca NBI and how fast they can adapt.

Here's an example where to weeds of the same species were sprayed with weed killer.

The one on the left looks like it's doing better, but that's the one that's going to die because the weed on the right has a new mutation that lets it push all the weed killer into its out.

Most leaves to sacrifice them so the core can survive.

This video was taken just before I arrived, so I got to see the survivor in person.

So this is the one that got sprayed.

Totally survives.

These are Black Chul right here.

Susceptible people in those of the resistance.

Now, these a beautiful because he's no Margo.

Yeah, right.

So they all have these little cores that survived?

Yes, just the outside part time.

Yeah, That's nuts, though, that this is the one you showed me that got.

I love that I thought would do.

I thought this was totally doomed.

And it's it's going all up to be a big problem.

And the tumbleweeds in particular, are insanely adaptive talking to the experts all day about the terror of tumbleweed and their seemingly endless ways to survive.

I wanted to know.

Why is it that some weeds are so much better at being weeds?

It was about that you know just what it is that is fascinating about so genetic variation is the source of natural selection acts on, and that's what enables species to respond to changes in climate over time.

Imagine that area around Salt Lake where you are in the harshest environments on the planet.

Right?

And yet, tumbleweeds Friday, if you've seen one, these videos where they make a media played that contains a different antibiotics in Siri's and put the bacteria to start.

A mutation will happen for existence, and I'll grow that they hit the next one.

Mutation happens in the grow and so on because bacteria divided 15 20 minutes.

You know it's happening so much faster, kind of asking, maybe why one species is a better we than, in other words, is that anybody have a higher rate of generating all the sources rage.

So extra copies imitations in those copies.

That's what it is.

It's not just the weed has a gene which can metabolize herbicide is that that we'd has 50 copies of the same gene, Which means the plant has all of these places in which mutations could possibly have benefited for processing like a different person and allowed to survive while still being able to keep all of the copies for the old version of the herbicide.

So it doesn't have to be just like you take that one gene in the exact right way.

Oh, yes, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Our working hypothesis right now is that Costa has a genome that is more prone to mistakes that generate jean applications than other species.

And I could just be really beneficial, especially for something that is invading and place.

What makes the difference between just dying off and going extinct versus propagating across the continent to be their their hair repair machinery has lower fidelity, and this generates variation that could be adaptive.

And then where it gets even a bit more provocative, is doesn't response stress?

Is that a signal to the plan to relax its air repair mechanisms were not generate Maur novel genetic variations, and we don't really know that you get adaptive variation from stress and we'd like to test it.

You say its the provocative one.

But I feel like I'm totally convinced you talk like let me so advantageous you too Cool, Yeah, So if we can't beat them, the question is, can we turn tumbleweed to our advantage because we've done the full genome sequence?

Orc OSHA We I want to explore the genes in these successful, long lasting weeds and see if there are traits that we can take out of the weeds and use them to improve soybeans or corn or cotton or whatever.

If you had to pick the four things that I would pull out of a plant like kosher.

So they're cold tolerant.

They're extremely heat power.

They're also very drought power.

It tolerates sailing soils from salty soils.

So if you could put those four traits together and introduce them into crop, Gino's at the global level.

I'm telling you, it would be worth billions and billions and billions of dollars looking at weeds as more than just something to kill in control and manage, but as a novel source of unique genes that could be beneficial for food and fuel production of a global level, the day is ending here, and it has totally been worth crossing the ocean for.

My brain is completely full of tumbleweed talk, thanks to the team at the Colorado State We lab.

But I am exhausted.

I've stayed on GMT, so it's much leader for me here than it normally would be.

So I need to get back to the hotel, to sleep and to process everything to get up tomorrow morning, to drive to the airports and to fly back home to make some adjustments to the script.

Based on all of the conversations here, so that future main could finish making that video.

I think it's gonna be a good one.

I'm really excited for something like this.

Is a person manually putting one time?

Holy moly.