The term “hyperaccumulator” describes a number of plants that belong to distantly related families, but share the ability to grow on metalliferous soils and to accumulate extraordinarily high amounts of heavy metals in the aerial organs, far in excess of the levels found in the majority of species, without suffering phytotoxic effects. Three basic hallmarks distinguish hyperaccumulators from related non-hyperaccumulating taxa: a strongly enhanced rate of heavy metal uptake, a faster root-to-shoot translocation and a greater ability to detoxify and sequester heavy metals in leaves. An interesting breakthrough that has emerged from comparative physiological and molecular analyses of hyperaccumulators and related non-hyperaccumulators is that most key steps of hyperaccumulation rely on different regulation and expression of genes found in both kinds of plants. In particular, a determinant role in driving the uptake, translocation to leaves and, finally, sequestration in vacuoles or cell walls of great amounts of heavy metals, is played in hyperaccumulators by constitutive overexpression of genes encoding transmembrane transporters, such as members of ZIP, HMA, MATE, YSL and MTP families. Among the hypotheses proposed to explain the function of hyperaccumulation, most evidence has supported the “elemental defence” hypothesis, which states that plants hyperaccumulate heavy metals as a defence mechanism against natural enemies, such as herbivores. According to the more recent hypothesis of “joint effects”, heavy metals can operate in concert with organic defensive compounds leading to enhanced plant defence overall. 
 
 Heavy metal contaminated soils pose an increasing problem to human and animal health. Using plants that hyperaccumulate specific metals in cleanup efforts appeared over the last 20 years. Metal accumulating species can be used for phytoremediation (removal of contaminant from soils) or phytomining (growing plants to harvest the metals). In addition, as many of the metals that can be hyperaccumulated are also essential nutrients, food fortification and phytoremediation might be considered two sides of the same coin. An overview of literature discussing the phytoremediation capacity of hyperaccumulators to clean up soils contaminated with heavy metals and the possibility of using these plants in phytomining is presented. 

 Scientists from the University of the Philippines, Los Baños have discovered a new plant species with an unusual lifestyle -- it eats nickel for a living -- accumulating up to 18,000 ppm of the metal in its leaves without itself being poisoned, says Professor Edwino Fernando, lead author of the report. Such an amount is a hundred to a thousand times higher than in most other plants. The study was published in the open access journal PhytoKeys. 
 
 The new species is called Rinorea niccolifera, reflecting its ability to absorb nickel in very high amounts. Nickel hyperaccumulation is such a rare phenomenon with only about 0.5-1% of plant species native to nickel-rich soils having been recorded to exhibit the ability. Throughout the world, only about 450 species are known with this unusual trait, which is still a small proportion of the estimated 300,000 species of vascular plants. 
 
 The new species, according to Dr Marilyn Quimado, one of the lead scientists of the research team, was discovered on the western part of Luzon Island in the Philippines, an area known for soils rich in heavy metals. 
 
 "Hyperacccumulator plants have great potentials for the development of green technologies, for example, 'phytoremediation' and 'phytomining'", explains Dr Augustine Doronila of the School of Chemistry, University of Melbourne, who is also co-author of the report. 
 
 Phytoremediation refers to the use of hyperacccumulator plants to remove heavy metals in contaminated soils. Phytomining, on the other hand, is the use of hyperacccumulator plants to grow and harvest in order to recover commercially valuable metals in plant shoots from metal-rich sites. 
 
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 The field surveys and laboratory work of the scientists are part of the research project funded by the Department of Science and Technology - Philippine Council for Industry, Energy, and Emerging Technology Research and Development (DOST-PCIEERD). 
 
 Original source 
 
 Fernando ES, Quimado MO, Doronila AI (2014) Rinorea niccolifera (Violaceae), a new, nickel-hyperaccumulating species from Luzon Island, Philippines. PhytoKeys 37: 1-13. doi: 10.3897/phytokeys.37.7136 

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– A newly discovered plant from the Philippines has an unusual appetite—for nickel. In a press release on the find, researchers explain Rinorea niccolifera is a nickel hyperaccumulator, meaning it can absorb up to 18,000 parts per million of the metal in its leaves. That's a "normally toxic concentration" as much as 1,000 times the amount most plants are able to tolerate. If the ability sounds rare, that's because it is: Among the plant species that live in nickel-heavy soil, at most 1% can soak up so much nickel without being poisoned. That translates into roughly 450 plant species planet-wide. And the plant's unique ability may take it beyond the Philippines. As a co-author of the report explains, "hyperacccumulator plants have great potentials for the development of green technologies." Those technologies include using it to decontaminate soil (plants of this type have done so since the 1990s) or harvesting nickel from its plant shoots in a process known as phytomining. The plant is native to Luzon Island and, according to the paper published in PhytoKeys, it is already endangered, having a fragmented habitat of only about 193 square miles. Ironically, mining activities are one of the main threats to its existence. Hyperaccumulation is thought to have evolved as a defense response, making plants less palatable to the animals that might feed on it, according to a 2011 paper published in Plant Science. (Another recent metal-related discovery: gold, in eucalyptus trees.)