Two researchers who made the blue rose possible by uncovering how to silence plant genes are the winners of Australia's Prime Minister's Science Prize.
Silencing the enzyme responsible for red pigment has allowed the development of blue roses
Dr Peter Waterhouse and Dr Ming-Bo Wang, at
CSIRO Plant Industry's Canberra laboratory, made the discovery in 1997 while investigating plant viruses.
Dr Ming-Bo Wang and Dr Peter Waterhouse
When viruses attack plant cells they create a double-stranded RNA as a first step to creating new RNA viruses.
The plants would identify and cut up the double-stranded RNA and then attach these pieces of RNA to an enzyme that would then locate the single-stranded RNA of the virus and destroy it.
 |
(Image: Bearcage) |
Waterhouse and Wang believed that mechanism could be adapted to silence unwelcome genes by tricking the plant into thinking the message sent out by the gene was a virus.
clipped from: www.abc.net.au 