A Butterfly and Biotechnology

You might be aware of using E.coli for producing human proteins. E.coli is a well established expression system and easy to handle. And many people are working on this E.coli (even I'm handling only E.coli in my laboratory most times) Okay, we are fine with E.coli, and we are producing our protein of interest in that. And what is the need for an eukaryotic expression system? That thing, I explained in one of my previous posts ( Clone human genes into plants! ) I explained in that post like we are expressing our human proteins and we are growing the entire plant for obtaining our protein of interest. And we need not do that all time and there is a choice of growing plant cells in bio reactors! Yes, we do grow E.coli in bio reactors and why not the plant cells? You might be aware of this plant bio reactors and here I'm going to share something that I know about them.  Plant bio reactors I attended a seminar on "Advances in plant biotechnology" and as you g...

E.coli VS Plants! As an undergraduate of Biotechnology, I know about cloning . I know about cloning a gene which codes for a human protein into a bacterial cell, E.coli, most times. I also know about producing transgenic plant varieties. But, I don't know about cloning a human gene into plant! I came to know about cloning a human gene into plant and producing the protein in plants from the workshop session of AVIDADHAM'13. Let me explain something about this! As you may know, eukaryotic gene has both introns and exons. So cloning a eukaryotic gene into a prokaryote will have lots of problem like splicing and post translational modification. Generally for cloning eukaryotic gene into a prokaryote like E.coli, we do follow bottom up approach where we use mRNA to synthesise cDNA, to remove the noncoding introns. But, even if we remove the introns there will be problems with post translational modification. So, to avoid this, we are cloning our gene from human into pla...

You know, Phosphorous is very important for the better growth of many crops. Rice too needs phosphorous for its better growth. But, the major problem in our country (India) as well as the whole world is poor availability of Phosphorous in soil. We use different fertilizers because of this. The disadvantages of using fertilizers: Decreased soil fertility on long run Leeching of the fertilizer into water bodies leads to pollution. Alkalinity / acidity of the soil. We can even extend this list of disadvantages further. What’s the solution for this problem? Scientists had found a good solution for this problem. Kasalath, a variety of rice has a gene called PSTOL1 which gives the tolerance for the plant to survive even in soil with low phosphorus. Highlights of this gene: It gets expressed in roots thereby increasing the root proliferation Helps in producing roots of good length and surface area This improves yield about 60% When we introduce t...

Hi, Today am gonna give certain tips for Plant tissue(PT) culture medium preparation. The main parameter to be considered in plant tissue culture medium preparation is "Sterility". Your medium has to be very sterile. I could say, when you complete your medium preparation, 75% of your project or experiment is over. I received a mail questioning the "Alternative for inositol" Inositol - This is added as a stimulator to the PT medium. This is not a "must" component. But, this in certain plants promote growth. Image courtesy - Google The essential component for promoting cell growth is Thiamin. It's a vitamin which is basically required for growth of most plants. It is normally used at concentrations ranging from 0.1 to 10.0 mg/liter. Coconut water, orange juice, malt extracts etc., are also added to PT medium as organic supplements. You know better alternative for inositol? Then, Comment, share your knowledge :) Wish you a happy day :) ...

Hi, I know a bit about Plant tissue culture and I would like to share it here. Plant Tissue culture Rack Plant Tissue culture, to be simple, it is growing plants in laboratory (invitro). To be more simple, you grow plants in test tubes and bottles by providing them light, nutrient by mimicking the natural conditions. It is effectively used as tool for producing GM(Genetically Modified) plants. Don't confuse "plant tissue culture" with "HORTICULTURE" The basic of Plant Tissue Culture : Totipotency:  The ability of a single plant cell to grow into an entire plant is generally referred as totipotency. Plasticity:  The ability of plants to survive in extreme conditions by modifying their metabolism is generally referred as plasticity. Things you need to do plant tissue culture 1) Laminar air hood 2) Plant growth chamber 3)Chemicals for preparing medium 4)Autoclave 5)pH meter 6) Test tubes or Bottles with caps 7) Cotton plugs 8) Scalpels, Fo...