Plants communicate through volatile organic compounds (VOCs), but real‐time monitoring of VOCs for plant intercommunication is not practically possible yet. A nanobionic VOC sensor plant is created to study VOC‐mediated plant intercommunication by incorporating surface‐enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) nanosensors into a living plant. This sensor allows real‐time monitoring of VOC with a sensitivity down to the parts per trillion level. A quantitative VOC diffusion model in plants is proposed to describe this extreme sensitivity. The sensor plant is paired with a customized portable Raman device, demonstrating its ability to detect multiple VOCs on‐field. The sensor demonstrated that plants collect VOCs emitted from neighboring plants and hazardous volatile chemicals in the air at a certain distance. As a feasibility study, this nanobionic VOC sensor plant successfully monitored the early stages of fungal infection in strawberry fruits. This result suggests that interfacing nanosensors with plants offers an innovative approach to studying interplant communication and can be used as a compelling tool for monitoring VOC occurrence.

Excessive accumulation of melanin can cause skin pigmentation disorders, which may be accompanied by significant psychological stress. Although many natural and synthetic products have been developed for the regulation of melanogenesis biochemistry, the management of unwanted skin pigmentation remains challenging. Herein, we investigated the potential hypopigmenting properties of peptide sequences that originated from milk proteins such as ĸ-casein and β-lactoglobulin. These proteins are known to inhibit melanogenesis and their hydrolysates are reported as antioxidant peptides. We synthesize tetrapeptide fragments of the milk protein hydrolysates and investigate the amino acids that are essential for designing peptides with tyrosinase inhibitory and antioxidant activities. We found that the peptide methionine-histidine-isoleucine-arginine amide sufficiently inhibits mushroom tyrosinase activity, shows potent antioxidant activity and effectively impedes melanogenesis in cultured melanocytes via cooperative biological activities. Our findings demonstrate the potential utility of the bioactive tetrapeptide from milk proteins as a chemical alternative to hypopigmenting agents.