Biotechnology Archive
Plants are highly adaptable and have many mechanisms to survive environmental stresses. Drought and high salinity of irrigation water are two stresses that pose problems in growing crop plants. In drought-tolerant plants, fungi, and bacteria, the sugar trehalose protects the …
Although weeds are a nuisance, even worse enemies of plants, and correspondingly more expensive to farmers, are: 1 . Insects and roundworms 2 . Fungal diseases (molds, blights, rusts, and rots) 3 . Viral diseases of plants It is possible …
Herbicides cost the world’s farmers more than $12 billion each year. Yet despite this, around 10% of the crop is lost due to weeds. One problem is that many of the chemicals used do not discriminate between crops and weeds. …
Another strategy for getting a gene of interest into plant tissue is to blast the DNA through the plant cell walls with a particle gun. Unlike Ti plasmid transfer by Agrobacterium , this technique works with all types of plants. …
The first step in genetically engineering a plant is to identify a gene that will confer a specific desirable trait on the plant. In some ways, this is the hardest part of genetic engineering. The most desirable traits for a …
BACs Bacterial Artificial Chromosomes, i) use fertility F plasmid ii) 75-300 kb inserts possible iii) Developed during the humane genome project YACs Yeast Artificial Chromosomes i) Mimics Yeast chromosome ii) Contains all regions for replication (Yeast Ori and centromere) iii) …
Fundamental concepts and definition: Plasmids are autonomous extrachromosomal replicons found commonly in prokaryotes, but also in eukaryotes and their organelles. They are generally covalently closed and superfoiled circles of double-stranded DNA with sizes ranging from 1 to 300 kbp. They …
RNA molecules with catalytic ability are known as ribozymes . Some ribozymes act by cleaving other RNA molecules. Such ribozymes have catalytic domains that carry out the reaction fused to domains that recognize the substrate RNA by base pairing. If …
Although most cancers are not inherited via the germ line, cancer is nonetheless a genetic disease. In the case of hereditary disease we may attempt to replace the defective component, thus preventing cell death. In contrast, when dealing with a …
About 10% of gene therapy trials have used liposomes . These are hollow microscopic spheres of phospholipid, and can be filled with DNA or other molecules during assembly. The liposomes will merge with the membranes surrounding most animal cells and …