5. Plant Biotechnology

• T-DNA contains genes for plant hormones to induce gall tumor growth.

  • cytokinin, auxin (growth)

  • opine biosynthesis gene (nutritional)

• T-plasmid is transferred into the host cell and integrated into the host cell

Opine synthesis

The crown gall produces a single opine that can only be metabolized by agrobacteria and no other rhizobacteria à only tumor is fed.

• Slide starting with field, glasshouse, glass reactors, tissue

• The more elaborate, the more expensive

• Comes with containment

• If you want to produce antibodies in plants, you get a lot of money and cell culture is worth it

• Major advantage for medical purposes: plants are never infected with human pathogens (can happen with human/animal cell culture; also, less likely for allergic reactions to occur

• Moss: whole gycosylation was removed and replaced with human genes, now they can produce human proteins in moss just the same (including glycosylation in ER)

Crossing: a (but genes need to be dominant)

step-by-step transformation: b

mixing of vectors and transforming at the same time: c

Multi-step engineering (increase something that is already produced) and single-step engineering (alter things or introduce new ones)

Chemical industry:

• actual chance of replacing fossil fuels (enough could be produced)

• problem: competition with food production

Biofuels:

• carbon neutrality

• problems:

  • competition with food production

  • we cannot produce enough to replace fossil fuels

Some things are toxic so you really have to separate them from food production.

Coconut oil as feedstock for soaps can be produced in transgenic rape with medium chain thioesterases

Calendic acid and punicic acid: Fatty acids with conjugated double bonds in plants serve as feedstocks for paints.