Posts Tagged ‘botany’
Suntory Creates Mythical Blue (Or, Um, Lavender-ish) Rose
Suntory, a Japanese company best known for its alcoholic beverages, has genetically modified a rose to give it an all-over color probably best described as lavender. The problem: roses lack a natural plant pigment known as delphinidin, which gives certain types of flowers, like geraniums and pansies, a blue color. Roses do not naturally have this pigment, but in 2004, Suntory finally managed to introduce a gene for blue pigment from a pansy into a rose. We're no stranger to , but this is the first time we've seen a mythical symbol created through the technique.
When I asked Yoshikazu Tanaka of Suntory what the inspiration for the project was, he said "The company wanted us to do something difficult, something nobody had achieved," and what project could be more difficult than an international symbol for impossibility? Of course, the rose really isn't "blue," though it is pretty, so I tried to politely ask if this was the color the team was going for. Mr. Tanaka told me that "every flower has its own way to be blue, with many different pigments. This is our first step: We will keep adding more pigments [to make the flower] more blue."
The rose, which Suntory has named "Applause," is in North America at select florists, tailor-made for the next impossible goal you achieve. Suntory's explanation for the name? It serves "as a symbol of congratulations for those whose dreams have come true, as well as of encouragement for those pursuing a dream, whatever it may be." Sniff. Go get 'em, blueish rose!
Video: Scientists Watch Grass Grow, at the Cellular Scale
The team stained growth cells in Arabadopsis thaliana and rice plants, and trained laser-scanning microscopes on the growing plants, according to Scientific American. They fed the microscope data into new computer algorithms that reassembled the structures, cell by cell, in three dimensions. The result is this video.
The algorithm and the "filming" technique could inform future studies on other plants, and could also be used to study cell death, the authors say.
Plants grow very differently than animals. Their seed embryos give rise to simple stalks, unlike human fetuses, for instance, which grow limb buds soon after conception. Instead, flowers, roots and bark appear as the plant matures. Cell development at this level is not well understood, as SciAm reports -- scientists don't know exactly what causes some cells to grow petals as opposed to roots.
The team stained certain growth cells, called meristem cells, which are responsible for developing organs like flowers and roots. They found that in Arapidopsis, the flower meristem cells divided about once every 19 to 24 hours and multiplied to "several hundred cells, even before the onset of differentiation and organ formation." The finding unlocks some secrets about cell division rules in plants, the researchers say.
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