James and the Giant Corn Genetics: Studying the Source Code of Nature

November 9, 2009

Genetically Engineered Crops: Canola

Field of Canola in Bloom. Photo: Joe Shlabotnik, flickr (click photo to view Joe's photostream)

Field of Canola in Bloom. Photo: Joe Shlabotnik, flickr (click photo to view Joe's photostream)

Scientific name: Brassica napus

Genetically Engineered Traits: Herbicide Resistance.

Details of Genetic Engineering:

Two companies have produced canola that is resistant to different herbicides.
Monsanto sells canola (Roundup Ready canola) that is resistant to glyphosate, an herbicide monsanto sells under the brand name Roundup and lots of other companies sell under lots of other brand names since the herbicide itself recently came off patent (the resistance trait is still under patent.)
Bayer sells canola (Liberty Link canola) that resists the completely different, if similar sounding herbicide, glufosinate. Glufosinate is sold under a number of brand names (including, you guessed it, Liberty), but I wasn’t able to figure out whether or not it is still under patent.
About Canola:
Derived from the name “Canadian Oil” canola is an oilseed plant also known as rapeseed. The name change came in the 1970s when conventional breeding (this was approx. two decades before the first genetically engineered plants hit the market) created plants with healthier oil and without the bitter taste , and presumably someone to majored in advertising suggested that selling “Rape Oil” would be a good way to go bankrupt.

Two companies have produced canola that is resistant to different herbicides.

Monsanto sells canola (Roundup Ready canola) that is resistant to glyphosate, an herbicide Monsanto sells under the brand name Roundup and lots of other companies sell under lots of other brand names since the herbicide itself recently came off patent (the resistance trait is still under patent.)

Bayer sells canola (Liberty Link canola) that resists the completely different, if similar sounding herbicide, glufosinate. Glufosinate is sold under a number of brand names (including, you guessed it, Liberty), but I wasn’t able to figure out whether or not it is still under patent.

About Canola:

Derived from the name “Canadian Oil” canola is breed of the oilseed crop rapeseed. The name change came in the 1970s when conventional breeding (this was approx. two decades before the first genetically engineered plants hit the market) created plants with healthier oil and without the bitter taste people associated with rapeseed oil, and presumably someone to majored in advertising suggested that selling “Rape Oil” would be a good way to go bankrupt.

Close up of Canola Flowers. Photo: Pollobarca2, flickr (click photo to see pollobarca2's photostream)

Close up of Canola Flowers. Photo: Pollobarca2, flickr (click photo to see pollobarca2's photostream)

Rapeseed (the USDA doesn’t break out separate statistics for Canola) was the third biggest source of vegetable oils around the world in 2008-2009 at 20.5 million metric tons, coming in behind only soybeans and oil palms.

Canola is the main oil I use in my own cooking. Canola is apparently one of the healthier sources of vegetable oils, but the two things I most appreciate about it are the high smoke point (it’s harder to burn the oil itself*), and low cost. Last time I checked I was able to find a 48 oz bottle of canola oil for 2.99 which was better than local prices for peanut or corn oil. (Olive oil of course comes in much smaller containers that cost $10 or more, not at all suitable for graduate students.)

*Good for someone who is both as indifferent a cook, and as easily distracted as I am.

November 8, 2009

Biological Control of Western Corn Rootworms

Filed under: agriculture,biology,Genetics,Plants — Tags: , , , , — James @ 8:52 pm
Face of the Enemy: Adult Western Corn Rootworm chewing on the silks of a corn ear. Picture from wikimedia, apparently in the public domain

Face of the Enemy: Adult Western Corn Rootworm chewing on the silks of a corn ear. Picture from wikimedia, apparently in the public domain

This post discusses the paper Degenhardt, J et al. (2009) “Restoring a maize root signal that attracts insect-killing nematodes to control a major pest”

The Western Corn Rootworm (which as you can see from the picture to the right are not actually worms) is estimated to cost farmers in the US alone one billion dollars a year in lost yield and pest control measures. The newly hatched larva begin feeding on root hairs and as they get bigger start attacking the main roots of a corn plant. The damage to the roots from the feeding itself is exacerbated by the open wounds becoming infected. The loss of roots both stresses the plant and reduces yield by decreasing the plant’s supply of nutrients and water, but also makes it much more vulnerable to lodging (getting blown down by a gust of wind). Oh, and did I mention the adults like to feed on the corn plant’s reproductive tissues, decreasing yield even further?

Rootworms are one of the pests controlled by plants genetically engineered to express BT a protein taken from organic agriculture. Without it, the 1 billion dollar price tag for rootworm damage and control would be even higher. But this isn’t an article about bt, it’s an article about how some corn already knows how to call for help when rootworms attack.

Rootworm larva may feast on the roots of maize, but they are in turn eaten by some species of nematodes.* And it turns out some kinds of corn know how to attract nematodes, and when they’re under attack by rootworms they do just that. The nematodes get a delicious meal of rootworms and the corn plant gets to keep more of its roots intact.

How do corn plants attract their, unintentional, nematode defenders? (more…)

November 1, 2009

Domestication Bottlenecks

Driveway tomato garden. How much diversity do these plants contain?

Driveway tomato garden. How much diversity do these plants contain?

Crops like tomatoes, even heirloom tomatoes, aren’t found in the wild. Domestication of crops usually involves only a relative handful of individual plants. Narrowing the species down to a few hundred (or possibly even a few dozen plants) means only a limited number of copies of each gene will be carried through and many of the variant copies of the genes present in the wild population won’t be included in that number. Keeping the population small for multiple generation reduces variability even more as by chance some rare version of genes in one generation won’t be passed to any of the offspring in the next.

Genetic bottlenecks happen in the animal world as well. Skin grafts between unrelated Cheetahs aren’t rejected because the animals are so genetically similar their immune system can’t distinguish the grafted skin as being different from its own skin. Even less fortunate are the tasmanian devils who have so little genetic diversity that they are being decimated by a transmissible cancer. After fighting with an infected devil, which has tumors on its face and neck, tiny bits of the cancer will get into an uninfected devil’s wounds, and since the immune system can’t distinguish the foreign cancer cells from the devil’s own cells, the cancer cells reproduce unchecked, the trait that makes normal cancers, produced by mutated versions of our own cells, so deadly. And the solution mentioned in the article, to save the species by protecting 200 individuals, while better than letting them all die, will sacrifice even more genetic variability by subjecting the already inbred devils to a new population (and genetic) bottleneck. (more…)

October 27, 2009

Banana Biology

When I was giving my lecture to on phylogeny and tetraploidies, I found out not everyone knows why bananas don’t have seeds.

The reason the bananas we eat don’t have seeds is that they are all sterile. A long time ago the Cavendish bananas first came into being when a tetraploid banana (that is a plant that has four copies of every chromosome instead of the normal two) mated with a normal diploid banana. The result, a banana with three copies of every chromosome couldn’t mate or produce seeds. One of the steps in making reproductive cells (the analog of human sperm and egg cells) is the even dividing of a plant’s chromosomes into two reproductive cells.* Normal diploid cells can easily divide into two cells (one copy of each chromosome in each cell), tetraploid plants can divide the same way (two copies of each chromosome in each cell). Hexaploid, three copies in each and so on. Odd numbers of chromosomes don’t work. The plants can’t successfully make the cells it needs to reproduce, if it can’t reproduce it can’t make seeds, and that is why bananas (or seedless watermelons) don’t have seeds. (more…)

October 14, 2009

Potato Breeding

Unfortunately the purple potatoes aren't a Cornell Breed

Unfortunately these purple potatoes aren't one of the Cornell breeds

A lot of people may not share my enthusiasm for the potato genome, hopefully you all enjoy eating potatoes. The stereotype of potatoes is lots of boring sameness one identical to the next.* Reality, as usual, is much more complicated. Tens of thousands of cultivars can still be found in the South American regions where potatoes were first domesticated. In America, breeders are constantly working to bring in desirable traits from those (often really cool looking) breeds and even wild relatives of the potato. They face both genetic barriers (species barriers are bad enough normally, but trying to introgress genes across a tetraploidy can be a mess) and consumer acceptance ones.

This was driven home in a story at the NYtimes about Cornell potato breeders who have developed breeds which grow much better in upstate New York, but run into problems because the potatoes look and taste different than the couple of varieties of potatoes consumers and restaurants are used to (most notably Idaho grown Russet Burbanks**). Cornell Extension has been working on overcoming that barrier providing the potatoes to restaurants and, in what I think is a genius move, culinary schools throughout the region.

If you happen to visit New York farmers markets take a moment to ask sellers about the breeds of potatoes they have for sale.*** The potatoes covered in the story are Salem, Eva (both white potatoes), Lehigh, Keuka Gold (yellow breeds), Adirondack Blue and Adirondack Red (both of which are just the color you’d expect from the name.) Purple potatoes in particular just look really cool, see image above.

*There was a saying about accepting differences that I vaguely remember from a childhood TV show, something along the lines of “People aren’t the same like potatoes, and that’s a good thing because potatoes are boring.”

**The Russett Burbank was developed by a truck gardener outside of New York City called Luther Burbank in the 1800s who was initially inspired to become involved in plant breeding by Charles Darwin’s 1868 The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication. He later moved to California where he became famous plant breeder and, among other things championed the practice of grafting (connecting a cutting from one plant (usually a tree) to the stem of another, which, if done properly grows the two together and the cutting will grow flower and produce fruit like it would normally) a practice at the time condemned as unnatural. <– This info from Mendel in the Kitchen by Nina Fedoroff and Nancy Brown a great resource

***In fact, whenever you’re buying directly from a farmer, if you get a chance, ask about the breed of whatever you’re buying. More often than you’d expect there’s an interesting story about why he or she is growing that particular breed and where it came from.

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