Re: GM wheat: visual overview of process

From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Fri Aug 11 2000 - 08:14:09 MDT


altamira wrote:
>
> Since we've discussed GM food crops on the list lately, I thought some of
> you might be interested in seeing how it's done. Here's a cool site on
> wheat transformation that goes step-by-step through the process of
> developing herbicide resistant wheat. It includes photographs of each step.
>
> http://agadsrv.msu.montana.edu/WeedTrans/transform1.htm
>
> If you're interested in more technical info such as recipes for tissue
> culture media & procedures for molecular analysis, go here:
> http://agadsrv.msu.montana.edu/WeedTrans/_private/wtc/proced.htm

So it seems that the process does still use some natural selection methods to
weed out successfully transformed plants from untransformed plants: "Following
acclimation the plants
are screened for herbicide resistance by spraying with the selective herbicide.
With current
procedures only 10-20% of the plants are actually transgenic. (Unaffected by the
herbicide.)" In this respect, this is little different from natural selection of
naturally mutated species.



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