Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Roger Beachy PhD


This tiny transgenic tobacco plantlet can be grown in a small water dish as shown here, but still can be used to produce large quantities of recombinant protein, illustrating that plant bioreactors are extremely economical. (Source: Chenming Zhang, PhD)
“Some of the earliest ideas of using plants to produce novel proteins came from plant virologists,” says Roger Beachy, PhD, president of The Donald Danforth Plant Center, St. Louis. Those earlier scientists looked at the possibility of using plant viruses to carry new genetic information into a host plant, the result of which was temporary production of novel proteins. This type of transient expression of a foreign protein represented the beginning of plant biotechnology. Complete story click.