To compensate for the extremely low penetration efficiency of the original PDS/1000-He Bio Rad biolistic device and the deleterious blast effect, design modifications have been made to the launching module. These modifications were evaluated on Bombyx mori embryos and fragile tissues, such as oocytes and imaginal wing disks. The original floppy macrocarrier was replaced by a rigid macrocarrier ...

The psbD mRNA of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is one of the most abundant chloroplast transcripts and encodes the photosystem II reaction center polypeptide D2. This RNA exists in two forms with 5' untranslated regions of 74 and 47 nucleotides. The shorter form, which is associated with polysomes, is likely to result from processing of the larger RNA. Using site-directed mutagenesis and biolistic ...

Fusarium head blight (FHB; scab), primarily caused by Fusarium graminearum, is a devastating disease of wheat worldwide. FHB causes yield reductions and contamination of grains with trichothecene mycotoxins such as deoxynivalenol (DON). The genetic variation in existing wheat germplasm pools for FHB resistance is low and may not provide sufficient resistance to develop cultivars through traditi...

The number of laboratories using the free living nematode C. elegans is rapidly growing. The popularity of this biological model is attributed to a rapid generation time and short life span, easy and inexpensive maintenance, fully sequenced genome, and array of RNAi resources and mutant animals. Additionally, analysis of the C. elegans genome revealed a great similarity between worms and higher...

A key challenge in molecular breeding of orchids is the creation of efficient and reproducible gene transformation systems. In this study, we report a new transformation method utilizing L-methionine sulfoximine (MSO) as a novel agent for selection of transgenic Dendrobium hybrids D. Madame Thong-In and D. Chao Praya Smile with the bialaphos resistance (bar) gene as a selectable marker. Gene tr...

Applying nanotechnology to plant science requires efficient systems for the delivery of nanoparticles (NPs) to plant cells and tissues. The presence of a cell wall in plant cells makes it challenging to extend the NP delivery methods available for animal research. In this work, research is presented which establishes an efficient NP delivery system for plant tissues using the biolistic method. ...

Since the first reports on GM crops in the 1980s (Bevan, 1984), the amount of debate surrounding the generation of transgenic plants and the political and economical ramifications of their development have seldom been far from the public eye. It could be said that attention on the use of transgenically modified crop plants is substantially greater than on any other area of plant science. To dat...

Strong viroid-caused pathogenesis was achieved in tomato cv. Rutgers by biolistic transfer of severe or lethal potato spindle tuber viroid (PSTVd) strains, while other tomato genotypes (e.g., Moneymaker) were tolerant. With reciprocal hybrids between sensitive and tolerant genotypes, we show that plant depression dominates over tolerance. Biolistic transfer of the most pathogenic PSTVd strain A...

The mitochondrial expression of exogenous antibiotic resistance genes has not been demonstrated successfully to date, which has limited the development of antibiotic resistance genes as selectable markers for mitochondrial site-directed transformation in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. In this work, the plasmid pBSLPNCB was constructed by inserting the gene ble of Streptoalloteichus hindustanus (Sh ...

A reliable and reproducible protocol has been developed for high frequency plant regeneration from 4-5 mm long leaf base segments of 4 days old in vitro germinated seedlings of indica rice (Oryza sativa) cultivar Rasi. The effect of age of seedlings, position of leaf base segments and optimum concentration of 2,4-D on callus induction frequency was investigated with a future aim to use leaf bas...