Tropes

Livescience_2013 01083.txt

#Big Tobacco: Geneticists Create a Plant That Can't Stop Growing In the comedy Little Shop of Horrors a carnivorous plant named Audrey Jr. grew nonstop by feasting on unsuspecting human beings. In a somewhat more benign development researchers in Germany have developed tobacco plants that also can't stop growing. Under normal conditions the tobacco plant has a rather uninspiring lifespan. They grow for three or four months according to Investor's Business Daily reaching 6. 5 feet (2 meters) in height at the most while their older leaves turn yellow and fall off. After flowering the plants die. But researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular biology and Applied Ecology (IME) in MÃ nster Germany have isolated the genetic switch that tells the tobacco plant to stop growing flower and die. By suppressing that gene the scientists have tricked the plants into growing like Jack's beanstalk even the older leaves stay green and healthy. The first of our tobacco plants is now almost eight years old but it still just keeps on growing and growing Dirk Prã fer a professor at the Department of Functional and Applied Genomics at IME said in a statement. Although we regularly cut it it's six-and-a-half meters 21 ft. tall. Genetic research on plants has produced also a variety of switchgrass (an important source of biofuels) that grows faster and produces thicker roots. By switching off a gene called UPBEAT1 the switchgrass never receives a signal to stop growing leading scientists to believe they can use the modified plant to create a higher-yielding biofuel crop. In other tobacco research the plants have been engineered genetically to glow in the dark: By inserting a gene from bioluminescent marine bacteria researchers at Bioglow Inc. developed a tobacco plant with faintly glowing green leaves. The scientists at IME hope to use their genetic engineering technique to create larger longer-lived food plants. They are currently working with a Japanese company to develop a potato plant that possesses the same robust growth as their giant tobacco plant. Follow Livescience on Twitter@livescience. We're also on Facebook& Google

< Back - Next >