Scientists Create Giant Tobacco Plants That Remain Young Forever
Posted on January 11, 2013
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME in Munster, Germany have created tobacco plants that grow very large and have leaves that remain healthy and green. Normal tobacco plants grow for only about four months, then flower and die. The plants created by Fraunhofer never go through the flowering phase. They are also over six meters tall. Normal tobacco plants only grow to about 1.5 to 2.5 meters tall.
Professor Dirk Pr�fer, head of the Department of Functional and Applied Genomics at the IME, and colleagues Gundula Noll (right) and Lena Harig (left), are pictured in the greenhouse along with their huge tobacco plants in the above photo.
The researchers discovered a genetic switch which can prevent the plants from change blooming to flowering. They modified the expression of the gene and then inserted the gene back into the tobacco plant using a bacterium.
Professor Dirk Pr�fer, head of the Department of Functional and Applied Genomics at the IME, said in a statement, "The first of our tobacco plants is now almost eight years old but it still just keeps on growing and growing. Although we regularly cut it, it's six-and-a-half meters tall. If our greenhouse were a bit higher, it would probably be even bigger. Its stem is already ten centimeters in diameter."
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