Modification of plant genes

May 18, 2009 by timbercommunity

High-frequency modification of plant genes using engineered zinc-finger nucleases
Targeted gene modification of plant genes has been a long-standing goal in plant biology, which is now realized through the use of zinc finger nucleases. This opens up new opportunities to dissect plant gene function and develop new plants with valuable traits.

The Voytas lab publishes a paper online at Nature on April 29, with the title the holy grail for plant biologist, 2009 describing the first use of zinc finger nucleases to stimulate homologous recombination at endogenous plant genes. The study, a joint effort of the Voytas and Joung labs, uses zinc finger nucleases to introduce amino acid sequence changes in a plant gene that confer herbicide resistance. The study indicates that it is now possible to efficiently make targeted sequence changes in endogenous plant genes.
Authors
Jeffrey A. Townsend, David A. Wright, Ronnie J. Winfrey, Fengli Fu, Morgan L. Maeder et al.
More information from Nature Publishing Group
http://www.nature.com/nrg/journal/v10/n6/full/nrg2604.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature07845.html