The genes responsible for the transformation worked similarly in tobacco plants, which led Chapple to believe they will work in trees, alfalfa, corn, grass and other plants and spurred him to pursue a patent. Patents didn't appear in even his wildest dreams when Chapple started working on UV-protection in Arabidopsis . He began by pursuing a fascinating bit of basic research. Chapple says he has an abiding faith that good minds asking good questions about basic processes can bring to light problems that people haven't yet thought of solving. Sometimes scientists even find answers before they define a problem.
Basic science is like that.
We can't always tell where the next scientific advance is going to come from.