| Every two weeks, if not each week, we would like to present in
our web site recent topics of interest to the community of tissue
culture or tissue culture related science. The topics will vary from
basic to applied tissue culture technology to those on plant
transformation, molecular biology, genetically modified crops,
important patents and events pertaining to our interest. This week
we offer the following interesting article on a subject which has
created a confused picture in our mind for the past several years.
The bottom line of this topic is not to discourage proponents of GM
food but gives a clear message to the concerned scientists and
policy makers to be extremely careful in deciding whether to release
a GM food crop without being absolutely sure that a transgenic food
plant is harmless and do not pose a threat to the general pubic.
In the second week we posted a second article on
"Evolution of Plant Resistance Genes" by Dr. Tony Prior and his
associates at the CSIRO, Canberra, Australia. The third
article discusses about salt tolerance particularly its
molecular aspects. This article will be of particular interest to
Bangladesh where salt levels in soil in some areas are have
become our major concern.
The third week's article is about the use of virus as a vector to
ferry the alien gene(s) across the host plant and the molecular
basis as to how the virus gene, when incorporated into the
host's genome, acts as a deterrent to further attack by the
same virus.
This fourth week's feature article would sound like a
scientific fiction story, namely, planting of the model plant
Arabidopsis thaliana on Mars soil by a robot to be carried
there by spaceship. The mission has been scheduled for 2007. The
specific Arabidopsis plants contain genes from
jellyfish that will glow under stress conditions and will send
signals to Earth. Non transmission of light will indicate that
arabidopsis plants have adjusted themselves to Martian climate
and are doing okay.
The fifth week has two "Review of the week"
summaries. One deals with use of biotechnology in
production of parthnocarpic fruits (seedless) in non-parthenocarpic
species. As many as six genes have been identified and cloned which
hold a great promise for inducing seedless fruit without
fertilization and contribute to full development of fruits in
varieties where seedless fruits are misshapen. The second article is
about embryo development without fertilization. This
remarkable study has been carried out under the guidance of
Dr. Abid Chaudhury, Principal Investigator, CSIRO, Canberra,
Australia. The results reported in this article will go a long way
to breed high quality fruit varieties such as mango with
fidelity.
This week, an exciting article on, "Medical
Molecular Farming" is being published. In this review
article, Professor Henry Daniell (originally an Indian from Madras)
of Central Florida University and his associates have discussed how
in the foreseeable future, it may be possible to target genes of
interest (conferring immunity to a number of diseases through their
protein products) to chloroplast genome thereby ensuring its
maximum expression without any position effect. There are over
10,000 chloroplasts in an individual cell; so the gene of interest
will produce 10,000 fold more proteins in the form of a specific
vaccine.
If you have any specific questions about any of the EIGHT
articles, please go to the Web site at www.esb.utexas.edu/islam
and enter your query/queries on the top left hand column. Hopefully
you will get your answers at your email address.
Thank you for visiting.
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