Knowing the plant

14/01/2001
Down To Earth

Knowing the plant the genetic makeup of a plant has been deciphered for the first time by a team of scientists. The decoding of the genetic makeup of Arabidopsis thaliana , also known as thale cress, will pave way for better crossbreeding without genetic engineering, believe some plant biologists. The decoding has been done during the Arabidopsis Genome Initiative project, that was launched in 1996 by a consortium of public and private sector scientists from the us , the European Union and Japan. The sequence of Arabidopsis chromosomes 2 and 4 were decoded in 1999 and 1, 3 and 5 were decoded recently.

A thaliana is a tiny flowering plant, that has only five chromosomes. Therefore, it is biologically simple. It grows quickly, reproducing as many as eight generations per year. It has all the genes that more genetically complicated plants have. "Now we know what it essentially takes to make a flower,' said Jeff Dangl, a plant geneticist at the University of North Carolina, usa . "If human genome shows the causes of ill health, the plant genome will tell us more about the effects of nutrition. Bringing the two together will help in improving human conditions,' says Peter Schroeder, a member of the British Research Council that co-sponsored the project. "From this point on, plant science and genetics will never be the same again,' said Mike Bevan, European coordinator of the project. This discovery may lead to a boost in yields; make crops more resistant to pests, droughts or floods; and even create foods with in built vaccines to combat diseases. But opponents of the project fear that such experiments may result in unforeseen health and environmental consequences also.

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