- History of the Discovery of the Lotus Effect
Almost 50 years after the discovery (Heidelberg 1973-1977 and Bonn 1987-1997) of the Lotus Effect a short history appeared in a just published comprehensive handbook: Barthlott, W. (2023): Self-Cleaning Surfaces in Plants: The Discovery of the Lotus Effect as a Key Innovation for BiomimeticTechnologies. - in: Zhang X, Tryk D, Irie H & A. Fujishima (Eds.) Handbook of Self-Cleaning Surfaces and Materials: From Fundamentals to Applications, Chapter 15, pp. 359-369 - Wiley-VCH, https://doi.org/10.1002/9783527690688.ch15
- Superhydrophobic Cyanobacteria with Lotus Effect and the Evolution of Land Plants
It took us four decades since our lotus effect discovery to notice finally in 2016, that the phenomenon superhydrophobicity is restricted in nature exclusively to living organisms and probably evolved with the first land living plants in the Early Ordovician about 400 mya.
Now we have robust data for Cyanobacteria in terrestrial biofilms (e.g. Hassallia) which can switch from a hydrophilic to a stable superhydrophobic state and thus evidence that superhydrophobicity evolved already about one billion years ago. Hassalia also uses the lotus effect for dispersal of its diaspores.
We suppose superhydrophobicity played a crucial evolutionary role in the land transition of almost all organisms. Today it became most important in many differing biomimetic technical applications.
Barthlott, W., Büdel, B., Mail, M., Neumann, K.M., Bartels D. & E. Fischer: Superhydrophobic terrestrial Cyanobacteria and land plant transition – Front. Plant. Sci, 24 May 2022 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2022.880439
Additional Information in the media:
https://www.uni-bonn.de/de/neues/cyanobakterien-nutzen-den-lotuseffekt/
https://phys.org/news/2022-06-repellency-life-billion-years.html
https://www.pressreleasepoint.com/cyanobacteria-use-lotus-effect
https://www.isbe-online.org/?ui=english&mod=info&act=view&id=4676
https://www.myscience.de/en/news/2022/cyanobacteria_use_the_lotus_effect-2022-uni-bonn
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35685010/
http://astrobiology.com/2022/06/water-repellency-as-the-first-step-to-life-on-land-a-billion-years-ago.html
- Mario Markus Prize for Ludic Science
Our discovery of the Lotus Effect decades ago was simply a result of research out of curiosity about the natural world. One will never discover a true paradigm change with a prefixed idea for application in mind: the unexpected and unthinkable cannot be predicted and calculated in a research project with predictable aims and results.
Thus an encouraging new prize/award for researchers in natural science for playful “Ludic Science” has been established in 2022 within the framework of the GDCh (Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker). For more information visit www.gdch.de/mariomarkus