In plants, delayed flowering is associated with increased lifespan. Based on this principle, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology in Münster, Germany, have developed a genetically modified tobacco plant whose lifespan can last for years compared to its normal life cycle of just a few months.
According to the researchers, the first of their genetically modified tobacco plants is now almost eight years old, six-and-a-half meters tall, despite regular cutting, its stem is already ten centimeters in diameter, and, most of all, the plants’ leaves stay healthy and green.
No wonder, the scientists named the modified plant species “forever young”.
Under normal conditions, tobacco plants grow only for around three to four months, flower and then die. In this period, the plants reach a height of just about one-and-a-half to two meters, and the leaves, which grow from the bottom of the stem, soon turn yellow and drop off, say researchers.
So how did the Fraunhofer Institute researchers give the tobacco plants grown in their greenhouse eternal youth and unbounded growth?
Here’s how…
The researchers located a genetic switch, which can prevent the plants from flowering, modified the expression of that gene, and then inserted the modified gene back into the plant using a bacterium.
The same principle can be used on other plants also, particularly to get a greater amount of biomass from the plants, say the researchers.
Currently, the scientists are working on potato plants to make it more robust so that it yields more starch.
Professor Dirk Prüfer, head of the Department of Functional and Applied Genomics at the IME says, “Preventing plants from flowering presents a significant advantage, in that no flowering means no production of seeds or pollen. As a result, plants have no way of reproducing, which means they cannot spread into the environment in an unplanned way”.
by RTT Staff Writer
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