"The team is not looking to reinvent the wheel. Working off previously published papers, they have decided to take genes from a bioluminescent marine bacterium and insert it into seedlings of a small flowering plant that’s known as Arabidopsis. The process of creating the glowing plant, as the team describes it, is simple: They input the DNA sequences from the bacterium into a computer and a program modifies the DNA sequence to make it work in plants. The team then e-mails the file containing the sequence of letters (G, T, C, A) to a company in China, wires $8,000, and a few weeks later they get in the mail the DNA, synthesized by Chinese technicians. They then take the DNA and use a machine called a gene gun — because it’s earliest version was a modified air pistol — to insert it into the plant."
Posted on: Sun, 06 Oct 2013 01:53:02 +0000