🚀 go-pugleaf

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.  
>I've read of other genetic research on this plant as 
>well.  I remember that somebody got tobacco plants to make the same 
>enzymes that fireflies do, and the plants would grow in the dark.  Now this.
>What gives?  Why tobacco? 
> 
>----
>JOHN DOWD	john@mirror.TMC.COM
OB>{mit-eddie, pyramid, harvard!wjh12, xwait}!mirror!john
>Mirror Systems	Cambridge, MA  02140

I think that there are actually quite a few good reasons to use
tobacco.  I seem to recall that tobacco plants are unusually easy to
regenerate in culture from a single cell - this is very useful for
integrating new genes into the plant.  While use of Arabidopsis
thaliana (small weed) is more popular in labs due its small genome,
small size, and short generation period, tobacco is probably
commercially much more practical for production of bulk transgenic
products.  I sort of doubt that there are ulterior motives at work
here, since the processing/sale of the product would be out of the
domain of the tobacco giants.  (note that I am not that big on
plants, so some of this could be wrong....)


************************************************
*  David Resnick      dresnick@athena.mit.edu  * 
*     Kwajalein?  Where is that anyway?        *
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