Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!rockyd!rocky8!cucard!aecom!werner
From: werner@aecom.yu.edu (Craig Werner)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Why tobacco?
Summary: y
Message-ID: <2721@aecom.yu.edu>
Date: 18 Jan 90 01:49:04 GMT
References: <203100003@prism>
Organization: Albert Einstein Coll. of Med., NY
Lines: 28

In article <203100003@prism>, john@prism.TMC.COM writes:
> 
> The 1/16/90 New York Times has an article in the Science section, 
> about putting human genes in plants.  "Tobacco procuces sun screen 
> and antibodies".  My question:  Why tobacco?  Is there something 
> kind of fishy here, like the major tobacco companies funding this 
> research?, or finding alternative uses for the stuff so it's harder 
> to just quit growing the damn stuff?  I would think that almost 
> any other plant would be a better practical candidate for this kind 
> of thing.  Tobacco is very hard to grow, and takes a lot out of the soil.  

	Perhaps, but the genetics of tobacco are very well known, as are
that of its viruses, so it is very easy to genetically manipulate the
plant. It is not clear if currently, tobacco company money pays for a lot
of this research, although clearly the economic clout of tobacco was what
originally steered research in this direction.  By now, the science just
sort of has a life of its own, because it is easier to build on existing
work than it is to go discover a new plant that has such facility.  There
is of course, a lot of work going on with the (for lack of a better word)
noxious weed, Arabidopsis thaliana.  Cereals (wheat and rice) are very 
difficult to manipulate by molecular genetic techniques.


-- 
	        Craig Werner   (future MD/PhD, 4.5 years down, 2.5 to go)
	     werner@aecom.YU.EDU -- Albert Einstein College of Medicine
              (1935-14E Eastchester Rd., Bronx NY 10461, 212-931-2517)
                      "It's tough to incriminate a bread mold."