8
—Lancaster Farming. Saturda
Geneticists Perfect New
Hybridization Method
For the first time, a mature
hybrid plant has been grown
from fused genetic cells of two
different specise, completely
circumventing the normal sexual
and reprocuctive processes
The new method, called
parasexual hybridization, was
developed by biologists at the
AEC’s Brookhaven National
Laboratory (BNL) Although
cells have been fused before, they
have remained only as cells
The new result represents the
first known case where an entire
organism of any higher order of
life has been produced by com
bining two different species in
this way.
The new technique was
developed by research biologists
Dr Peter S Carlson, Dr. Harold
H Smith, and Rosemarie D
Bearing IC is reported in the
August issue of the Proceedings
of the National Academy of
Science, under the title
“Parasexual Interspecific Plant
Hybridization.”
The BNL method involves the
combining of genetic information
contained in cells of different
species to generate viable hybrid
cells having new genetic
characteristics, then inducing the
new cells to grow into a mature
plant
The standard genetic method of
producing a hybrid is by cross-
pollinating mature plants. Most
sexual corsses between different
plant species do not yield live or
fertile offspring since plants as
well as animals have specific
mechanisms to insure that fer-
tihzation with reproductive
ability occurs only between in-
dividuals of the same species.
The new technique of
parasexual hybridization cir
cumvents many of these natural
barriers to intergenetic
reproduction, and opens the
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potential of cross fertilitzation at
the cellular level between widely
divergent plant species.
The Brookhaven success
represents the application of
results from three widely
separated basic research
programs:
(1) Plants of the same species
has previously been grown from
wall-less cells in Japan.
(2) The fusing of wall-less cells
had been done in England, but
they remained as cells.
(3) In their own laboratory at
BNL, the biologists had
developed a technique to select
from millions of viable cells the
few that had the desired hybrid
characteristics
The final parasexually
produced hybrid at BNL is ex
tremely significant to agriculture
because it represents the
potential for genetically
developing totally new crop
species or the modification of
existing species having improved
yield, resistance to disease, etc.
For example, one can imagine
that it might be possible to devise
plants which produce edible food
above ground and an edible root
below ground. This would cause
(Continued On Page 29)
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Scientists at the Atomic Energy Com
mission’s Brookhaven National Laboratory
examine a hybrid tobacco plant created by
a new technique which bypasses the
natural restraints on cross breeding of
different species. The technique is called
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parasexual hybridization. It involves fusing
genetic cells from different species. The
result is new cells which contain an entirely
new set of genetic characteristics and
which can reproduce themselves. The work
opens up important new possibilties for
creating plants to meet specific needs.
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