Abstract
The origins of plant transgenesis are discussed and the experiments that led to the first transgenic plants are analyzed. This process involved a series of actors, practices and interests specific to biotechnology. Consensus about the meaning of fundamental experiments was also at issue here. These events illustrate some of the conflicts related to genetically modified organisms, since scientists had different responses to plant transgenesis at the time of the first experiments, and opinions of the anomalies in those experiments varied. Thus, this article analyzes the interests and interpretations surrounding the first experiments involving transgenic plants.
Highlights
Researcher at the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas and at the Instituto de Estudios sobre la Ciencia y la Tecnología/Universidad Nacional de Quilmes
Once the biological vector for transferring the relevant DNA to the plant had been defined, the task was to extract the oncogenic genes from the T-DNA and insert genes from another species into it; the modified T-DNA had to be introduced into the Ti plasmid, which would in turn be inserted into the Agrobacterium tumefaciens, which would be put in contact with the plant cell
Chilton managed to do this in an experiment that was crucial to the development of plant biotechnology: she inserted bacteria and yeast genes into the Ti plasmid, thereby obtaining a plant containing those new sequences in its genome (Barton et al, 1983)
Summary
Anomalies in the early stages of plant transgenesis: interests and interpretations surrounding the first transgenic plants. In 1974, they showed that an Agrobacterium plasmid, which they called the Ti plasmid, was responsible for causing the tumor in plants (Zaenen et al, 1974; Van Montagu, 2011).1 They tried to develop methods for altering Agrobacterium so as to use it as a vehicle for genetically modifying plants. Mary-Dell Chilton (2011), a researcher at Washington University, started looking for the genes of the plasmid that caused the tumor, which was, incontrovertibly, the tumor-inducing principle for Agrobacterium. Chilton put her entire laboratory to work on a single mission: finding out which areas of the plasmid were involved in producing the tumors. By redesigning the T-DNA (extracting the oncogenic genes and inserting different ones), it could be used as a vector for developing transgenic plants (De Framond, Barton, Chilton, 1983)
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