If I understand it properly, it isn't introns they are using to turn the purple flowers white, but RNAi (inhibitory RNA). I think there was an episode of NOVA on it recently. Petunias, by the way. This is one of the most exciting things to hit molecular biology in a long time... Turns out there is a mechanism in all cells which recognizes a certain structure of double stranded RNA (it is usually single stranded), and chews it up. It is thought to be a mechanism to protect cells against viruses. The neat part is that we can use that system to effectively destroy all of the messages for a given gene. It is cheap, easy, and powerful as all getout.
Heavily oversimplified explaination, I can make it more complicated if you want... We are starting to use this in our lab, actually.
Of course the downside to this is that you can only knock out genes, not knock them in. So, if you want your plants to glow, and there isn't some gene preventing them from glowing, this technology won't help you. But, it is pretty easy to add new genes to plants, too (the technology used to make the glowing orchids is widely used for other plants).
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Originally Posted by Tindomul1of9
  Flying orchids huh.
I don't want to have to cage them, all.
Seriously though, A while back I read that scientists are using genes called introns (parts of your DNA that are normally "cut" out before they get to do what genes do.) to make normally white flowers blue. I don't remember what plant they were using, but its ramifications were big. Everything from making all sorts of flowers to curing genetic diseases.  |
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