Genetical modification of plants

To what extent is genetic modification of plants and animals equivalent to changes made by conventional breeding See Spurgeon.510... 

A still lower-cost route to PHAs is genetic modification of plants to directly produce the final polymer. Monsanto (and others) pursued this approach and is currently being cofunded by the US Department of Energy (DOE) in a collaborative research project led by Metabolix. Switchgrass will be modified to produce PHAs, which can then be extracted from the plant material and processed to obtain a consistent composition and the desired material properties. The plant material remaining after PHA extraction can be used to produce fuels, power, or other products, creating the opportunity for a "plants as factories" biorefinery. Applications for polymers with properties similar to those of PHAs consume on the order of 13.6 million metric t annually, and it is possible that in the future PHAs will figure prominently in the plastics market. 

Genetic Modification of Plant Secondary Metabolite Pathways Using Transcriptional Regulators... 

There is much controversy, at least in Europe, concerning genetic modification of plants. The three major crops affected so far are maize, soyabean and rapeseed. All of these, in addition to their other uses, are sources of oil. The reasons for modification in all these cases are related to herbicide tolerance and resistance to insects. For the varieties generally available at present, there is no known difference from non-modified strains with respect to fatty acid composition, oil yield, tocopherol level, or the level of any other minor oil constituent. 

Protoplasts are osmotically weak plant cells dispossessed of their cell wall, also referred to as naked cells. Upon removal of the cell wall, protoplast can behave like animal cells which by nature have no cell wall barrier. Protoplasts have the potential ability to redifferentiate into whole plants due to their totipotency, and this has been exploited for genetic modification of plants however, there exist many recalcitrant plant species which have not been able to be transformed following this method, either because of failure to isolate viable protoplasts or impossibility of regeneration. 

Memelink J., Kijne J.W., van der Heijden R., Verpoorte R., Genetic modification of plant secondary metabolite pathways using transcriptional regulators, Adv. Biochem. Eng. Biotechnol., 72, 103-125 (2001)... 

M. Hu" hns, and I. Broer, Biopolymers. In Genetic Modification of Plants. Edited by Kempken F, Jung C.. Biotechnology in Agriculture and Forestry. Springer, 2010. 

This chapter will remind the reader that for all these new developments there are aheady examples of established production processes where plants, plant cell cultures, plant enzymes, or plant (secondary) metabolites play a major role. It will give examples where genetic modification of plants and the use of plant enzymes and ingredients have increased the economical and ecological potential of plants as renewable resources for a sustainable chemistry. 

With some specific exceptions, research and the development of genetically engineered animals has proven to be less straightforward than the genetic modification of plants and certainly more ethically problematic. In addition, although the public definitely shows some resistance to the idea of introducing genetically modified plants into the human... 

Analysis of the carbohydrate eomponents of the plantibody immunoglobin molecule has provided invaluable insight into the types of genetic modifications of plant glycosylation machinery that may be needed to give more desirable or human like glycans on other recombinant therapeutic proteins or antibodies. 

Davies, K.M., 2007. Genetic modification of plant metaboHsm for human health benefits. Mutation Research/ Fundamental and Molecular Mechanisms of Mutagenesis 622 (1), 122-137. 

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