SAN DIEGO — Artificial intelligence is helping to create new plants that can help fight climate change.

The art of movement has always fascinated Talmo Pereira. Now, he is a scientist at the Salk Institute who is turning motion into information.

What You Need To Know

  • A new research tool called SLEAP uses artificial intelligence software to track multiple features of root growth

  • SLEAP was initially designed to track animal movement in the lab

  • Using AI streamlines, the researchers work so they can hopefully find solutions faster

  • The software is free to use for researchers around the world

Talmo and his lab develop and apply artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to study the processes that make biological motion. Building on motion capture technology, he developed a deep learning software called SLEAP that can track animal and plant movement.

“We can’t really ask our animals, much less our plants, to wear motion capture suits; so that’s where the AI comes in,” Talmo said.

Professor Wolfgang Busch is working to engineer plants to help fight climate change as part of Salk's Harnessing Plants Initiative. He says SLEAP tracks multiple features of root growth, saving them tedious and time-consuming work.

“If I were to try to draw this whole root system, it would take me hours and hours for this one sample," Busch said. "And SLEAP detects the ends of the roots, where the roots begin, how many roots are there, which angles they grow; and it can do it within a couple of seconds.”

By focusing on root systems, Busch hopes to create new plants that can store more carbon for longer, and using AI streamlines their process so they can hopefully find solutions faster.

“SLEAP really helps us to analyze all the data and to analyze thousands or even ten thousands or hundreds of thousands of these samples so we save ourselves years,” Busch said.  

 Pereira says more than 60 countries are using SLEAP in their research.

“Folks have been using SLEAP to study pretty much anything that moves," he said. "Anything from single cells, even individual molecules, all the way through to every sort of insect, fish, monkeys, rodents, all kinds of wildlife out in the field.”

He also hopes to use SLEAP in the future to predict diseases like cancer, relying on AI to catch things too small to notice with a human eye. He is excited to see how it will be used around the world.

“It allows us to capture more than was ever going to be possible,” Talmo said.

Accessibility and reproducibility were at the forefront of Pereira’s mind when creating SLEAP, and he made the software free to use for researchers around the world. 

Salk says they have begun discussions with NASA scientists hoping to utilize the tool not only to help guide carbon-sequestering plants on Earth but also to study plants in space.