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Essay on Transgenic Rice Plants

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For centuries, rice has been one of the most important staple crops for the world and it now currently feeds more than two billion people, mostly living in developing countries. Rice is the major food source of Japan and China and it enjoys a long history of use in both cultures. In 1994, worldwide rice production peaked at 530 million metric tons. Yet, more than 200 million tons of rice are lost each year to biotic stresses such as disease and insect infestation. This extreme loss of crop is estimated to cost at least several billion dollars per year and heavy losses often leave third world countries desperate for their staple food.
Therefore, measures must be taken to decrease the amount of crop loss and …show more content…

This was useful for delivering the protein inhibitor to insects which eat plant material. The selectable marker in this trial was the bacterial phosphinothricin acetyl transferase gene (bar) which was linked to the cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) 35S promoter. Next the plasmid pTW was injected into cell cultures of Japonica rice using the
BiolisticTM particle delivery system. The BiolisticTM system proceeds as follows: Immature embryos and embryonic calli of six rice materials were bombarded with tungsten particles coated with DNA of two plasmids containing the appropriate genes. The plant materials showed high frequency of expression of genes when stained with X-Gluc. The number of blue or transgenic units was approximately 1,000.
After one week, the transgenic cells were transferred onto selection medium containing hygromycin
B. After two weeks, fresh cell cultures could be seen on bombarded tissue. Some cultures were white and some cultures were blue.
Isolated cell cultures were further selected on hygromycin resistance. However, no control plant survived.
Then twenty plates of cells were bombarded with the PINII gene, from which over two hundred plants were regenerated and grown in a greenhouse. After their growth, they were tested for PINII gene using
DNA blot hybridization and 73% of the plants were found to be transgenic.
DNA blot hybridization is the process by which DNA from each sample was digested by a

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