‘Sunbean’, a breakthrough
WASHINGTON, D.C. -
Secretary of Agriculture John R.
Block recently announced
development of a technology for
moving genes from one kind of
plant to another.
“This breakthrough
achievement opens a whole new
era m plant genetics,” Block said.
“It is the first step toward the day
when scientists will be able to
increase the nutritive value of
plants, to make plants resistant to
disease and environmental
stresses, and to make them
capable of fixing nitrogen from the
air.”
Block said scientists of the U.S.
Department of Agriculture and
University of Wisconsin have
opened the way to a new medium
for the genetic engineering of
plants-creatmg variations not now
available because of sterility
barriers between species and
genera.
What the scientists have done is
to transfer a gene that directs the
production of major protein from
its native location in the French
bean seed into the foreign en
vironment of a sunflower cell.
They call the new plant tissue
“sunbean.”
The gene is stable in its new
environment and Is producing
messenger RNA. Messenger RNA
is the cellular vehicle that carries
genetic information from the genes
to the protein-synthesizing
machinery of the cell.
The scientists now are looking
for—and hope soon to see—the
production of the bean protein in
the “sunbean.”
To achieve the genetic transfer,
research teams ted by biochemists
John D. Kemp of USDA's
Agricultural Research Service and
Timothy C. Hall of the University
of Wisconsm-Madison used a
Lancaster Faming, Saturday, July 18,1981— AiZS
m moving genes
bacterium, Agrobacterium
tumefaciens.
This bacterium, which causes
crown gall disease in certain
species of plants, has been called
“Nature’s genetic engineer”
because it transfers a small piece
of its genetic material into a host
plant's cells.
This genetic material then is
incorporated into the plant cells
and causes fundamental changes'
in their genetic makeup.
Kemp said, “What we did was to
turn the bacteria’s exploitation of
plant cells into a tool for the
transfer of genes useful to us.”
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To do this, scientists employed a
form of piggy-backing. The
strategy used involved the splicing
of the bean protein gene into a
location of the bacterium the
scientists know is responsible for
transmitting crown gall disease.
Kemp said although the bean
protein is not yet being produced in
the new “sunbean” plant tissues,
the scientists plan to modify their
new methods until they attain high*
levels of protein production.
The next step is to regenerate a
sunflower plant from the cells in
the tissue cultures. The technology
to do this is not yet available, nor
do the scientists know exactly the
effect the bean gene will have on
regenerated sunflower plants.
These developments are yet to
come. They may not come quickly
or easily, Kemp said. However, he
said, he and his colleagues will
continue their pioneering work,
which they characterize as “laying
the ground work for 2lst century
agriculture.''
This announcement closely
follows one made by Block June 18
on using genetic engineering to
produce a vaccine effective
against the virus of food-and
mouth disease.