A DNA Cloud? In the recent (and brilliant) Richard Powers novel Orfeo, composer Peter Els attempts to encode a digital rendition of one of his musical compositions into a strand of DNA, then splice it into the genome of a living cell. This, he hopes, will perpetuate his music for…
DIY Plant Biotech It’s been over three years since I first explored the field of do-it-yourself plant biotechnology in a blog post entitled DIY Plant Genetic Engineering? Since then, interest and activity in DIY biotech has grown. For instance, please see a more recent blog post on the subject Bio-Hacking…
Plants “Stink” One of the really cool things about plants, which I think most people don’t realize, is that they emit many kinds of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Some of these VOCs we can smell, such as flower fragrances and pine scents. But many, such as the plant hormone ethylene,…
To Label, Or Not To Label, That Is The Question Political “slings and arrows” manifested as junk mail and newspaper, radio and TV ads are raining down on the poor folks in Washington state these days. And “outrageous fortunes” are being spent by opposing sides of one of the most…
What This Post Is – and Isn’t – About This post is mainly about some recent examples of how humans are involved in the “artificial selection” of plants. Many have used this term – including Charles Darwin – to describe the selective breeding of plants and animals. (Since this topic…
On the Past, Present & Future of Plant Genetic Engineering Why would anyone want to insert foreign genes into plants? When and where was this technology invented? And how does it work? Who makes money from this technology? If you grow genetically-engineered crops in the field, won’t the foreign genes…
Trees That Glow At Night? Perhaps you saw the recent article in the NY Times online about a small group of biotechnology hobbyists and entrepreneurs who have started a project to develop trees that glow in the dark. Is this a joke? Well, apparently not….at least to the 7,000 people…
After Nearly 20 Years, What’s Up With Genetically-Engineered Crops? Genetically-engineered (or more commonly referred to as “genetically-modified”) crops have come along way since the ill-fated “Flavr Savr” tomato was first commercially produced and sold in 1994. (For more on the Flavr Savr tomato, see Update at the end of this…
Making Transgenic Plants Without Using Tissue Culture Since the first successful genetic transformation of plants using Agrobacterium in 1983, many methods for transferring foreign genes into plants have been developed, including the so-called “gene guns”. (A good overview is presented in Ref 1 below.) Many, if not most, of these…