Thale cress blossom: Common thale cress
(Arabidopsis thaliana) is used as a model plant in many biotechnology
experiments. Credit: Photo: H. Puchta/ KIT
Crop plants have always been adapted to the
needs of man by breeding for them to carry more fruit, survive droughts, or
resist pests. Green biotechnology now adds new tools to the classical breeding
methods for a more rapid and efficient improvement of plant properties.
A
biotechnological technique developed by KIT botanists to more precisely and
reliably install or modify genetic information in the plant genome is now
presented by the expert journal PNAS.
The new
method is based on the natural repair mechanism of plants. So-called homologous
recombination repairs the genome when the genome strands in the cell break.
"Using an appropriate enzyme, i.e. molecular scissors, we
first make a cut at the right point in the genome and then supply the necessary
patch to repair this cut," says Friedrich Fauser from Karlsruhe Institute
of Technology, who is the first author of the PNAS publication.
"A part of this patch is the new gene piece we want to install. The rest
is done by the repair service of the cell."
Due to
this trick, the method that is referred to as "in planta gene
targeting" (IPGT) is highly reliable and the new genetic information is
incorporated in the genome precisely at the point desired. In principle, IPGT
may be applied to every plant. "This is a big advantage compared to
conventional methods that work for certain plants only and produce a lot of
rejects," explains Professor Holger Puchta, who holds the Chair for Molecular Biology and
Biochemistry of Plants at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. "Thanks to
appropriate molecular scissors and patches and the natural repair mechanism of
the cell, IPGT is about 100 times more efficient than techniques used so
far."
With
their experiments on the model
plant of thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana),
the researchers of KIT, in cooperation with the company SunGene GmbH, a
subsidiary of BASF Plant Science having its office at Gatersleben, have now
succeeded in furnishing evidence of the fact that IPGT works in plants.
"The next step towards broader application in biotechnolgoy will be the
transfer of the principle to other plants and the development of appropriate
scissors and patches," says Puchta. In this way, the favorable properties
of wild species can be transferred rapidly to crop plants. The long-term
objective is the optimum use of natural resources for the production of food
and vegetable raw materials.
More
information: PNAS: http://www.pnas.org/
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