Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Is it possible to genetically engineer an oak tree with glowing leaves?

A couple months ago I went on a BioBridge Trip where we genetically engineered e. coli with the green fluorescent protein found in jellyfish. In my bio cl we are also about half way through genetics. Anyway, on this biobridge trip it says a scientist, who's name I forget, mutated the GFP (Green Fluorescent Protein) gene so that it would generate different colors (g, cherry, tangerine, etc.). Anyway, I was wondering if it was possible to take the gene that creates luciferase in fireflies and mutate it to be other colors. Also, I was wondering if you could make say an oak tree that's leaves produced luciferase or a rose bush with glowing flowers? I know that all cells in an organism posess the full genetic code of that organism, could the leaves or flowers be made so that only they express that gene. For those that don't know much about science and dismiss the thought right away here's a tobacco plant that produces luciferase: a href="http://campus.queens.edu/faculty/jannr/Genetics/images/dnatech/fluorescentTobacco.jpg" rel="nofollow"http://campus.queens.edu/faculty/jannr/G…/a

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