I wasn’t a huge fan of the story of Avatar, and I thought it ran about 90 minutes longer than it should have. Nevertheless, I’m sure I’ll remember it for a long time because of the gorgeous visual world of Pandora. Unsurprisingly, the meticulous James Cameron consulted a bona fide biologist to help create Sigourney Weaver’s character, Grace, a no-nonsense botanist, and Pandora’s lush landscape (including, even, a catalog of its flora and fauna, called ‘Pandorapedia‘ to accompany the film).

Saturday’s LA Times ran a fascinating Q&A with said expert, plant physiologist Jodie Holt from the University of California, Riverside. Here’s a cute snippet:

“Overall I thought the science in the movie was fantastic! However, several of my colleagues noted, as I did, that the fact that Grace smoked could be a problem in the lab. The tobacco mosaic virus is common on cigarette tobacco and can easily be transmitted from a smoker’s hands to biological samples and contaminate them. I was never consulted about the smoking, as this was a part of Grace’s character separate from the science. Only biologists in the audience who work with molecular samples would think of this, however.”