Agri News, MN
05-29-07
Midwest news and notes
ISU creates new GMO plant method
Iowa State University researchers have found a new method to genetically
modify plants.
The new nanotechnology process allows researchers to introduce chemicals into
plant cells by using a porous particle. It's shaped like a sphere and has honeycomb-like caverns to be filled with chemicals or molecules that will be transferred
into the plant.
Since the mid-1990s, the conventional way to plug in new genes to plant cells
was through a "gene gun," a tool uses high-pressure gases to fire metal particles
coated with DNA at the cells to penetrate the cell wall.