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Biosafety research: tobacco with 'confined genes'

It is all still up in the air: plants being used as high-performance “production systems” from which vaccines, medically effective substances or special chemicals can be obtained. But the pre-requisite is that such plants – or to be more precise, the new foreign genes – do not outcross or spread by other means.

Over the past several years, research has been undertaken to see just how such a biological confinement could be realised.
 

The application: plastid transformation

A new research application aims to genetically modify plants not through the cell nucleus, which has been the conventional method up to now, but through the plastids. Plastids are units in plant cells that contain their own DNA. In contrast to the nuclear genome, plastid DNA is usually not carried in pollen. This could be one way to prevent the possible spread of transgenes.

Before this application can be put to use, it must be tested to see if the gene can actually be reliably “confined” in the plastid genome. In very rare cases, plastids could be inherited through the pollen or a gene transfer from the plastid genome to the nuclear genome could occur. In both cases, it is believed that environmental conditions play a role and that the frequency changes when the plants are exposed to various stresses.

Pilot tests in the Plant Science Garden

For testing, scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology in Potsdam-Golm have developed special tobacco plants in which they have inserted a certain easily identifiable gene into the plastid genome. Up to now tests have been conducted only in the laboratory and the greenhouse to see if these plants are actually “biologically tight” and that the foreign gene is not inherited.

Before these tobacco plants are tested in field conditions, however, scientists want to gather basic information on the impact of certain environmental conditions on processes in the plant. It is for that reason that pilot tests are being carried out in the Üplingen Plant Science Garden with similar, though not genetically modified, tobacco plants.

This research project is supported by the German Ministry of Education and Research.

Date: 2011