Welcome to Quantum Magazine's podcast.

Each episode, we bring you stories about developments in science and mathematics.

I'm Susan Vallett.

If plant evolution were a tough endurance race through mud and obstacles,

sporal pollen would be the champ. It's a plant material so sturdy that it's known

as the diamond of the plant world. And now, structural studies of sporopolinin

reveal how it made plants hardy enough to reproduce on dry land. That's next. Quantum Magazine is an editorially independent online publication supported by the Simons Foundation

to enhance public understanding of science.

Fushwang Li, a biochemist and research scientist at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts,

needed some pollen for his research.

He knew exactly where to go. Every spring, the pitch pine trees,

ringing walled and pond in Concord, released clouds of golden pollen that coat the water and

swirl along the shore. Henry David Thoreau, who lived here for two years in the 1840s,

said there was so much pollen, you could have collected

a barrel full. Lee heads out to the area with a group of reporters all on the lookout for the

specific type of pollen. Hey, there looks like there's some here. Hey, hey. Oh my gosh, you found it.

Lee just needs a test tube full of the pollen-laden water.

It's far from a barrel full, but it's more than enough for Lee's efforts to study the

molecular structure of the substance of pollen's outer shell, known as sporal pollenin.

For more than a century, scientists have tried to understand the chemical basis for

sporo-pollinin's unparalleled strength.

Sporopolin shields the DNA in pollen and spores from light, heat, cold, and desiccation.

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