How is genetic engineering of plants accomplished?
Plant biotechnology had its beginnings with some fundamental discoveries that made the genetic engineering of plants possible. Most notably these included the finding that a naturally occurring bacterium, Agrobacterium, was capable of infecting plant cells, injecting some of its own DNA, which existed on a extrachromosomal element, and having that DNA become a heritable part of the plant cell’s genome. Once recognized, plant biologists saw this as an opportunity to use a “natural” mechanism to put the genes of their choice into plants by simply substituting Agrobacterium sequences with their genes of choice. Another hurdle in achieving a genetically engineered plant was how to get this introduced DNA to be passed on to progeny in the germline. This was a significant issue with mammalian engineering where the changes had to be made in germline cells, cells that participated in the sexual union that gave rise to the next generation. But plant cells have a unique property that made this p
