In terms of evolutionary distance, plants and mammals are very far apart indeed. In fact, it’s unsurprising that people find the organisms completely different, plants as green, and animals as red. However, this idea could all change, according to Martin Fussenegger’s new research into the ability for a plant such as moss (specifically Physcomitrella patens), to express genes found in mammals. This is a surprising result as it is unexpected that plants share enough of the same biological machinery as mammals to produce mammalian proteins.
Martin Fussenegger, Professor of Chemical and Bioengineering at ETH Zurich, together with the researchers at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, managed to transfer foreign, unmodified human or mammalian genes directly into a moss’s genome. The result was that the moss was easily able to produce the proteins encoded by the foreign DNA. This is surprising as “higher” plants such as flowering plants cannot produce mammalian proteins in the same way a moss can. Given the incredible genetic distances between mammals and plants, this is unsurprising. However, since moss, a plant, can do what “higher” plants cannot, there must be something special about moss.
An explanation given by Ralf Reski, Professor of Plant Biotechnology at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, is that moss, after undergoing large evolutionary changes approximately 450 million years ago, remained a “generalist”, meaning that its processes to create proteins remained relatively unspecialised. This gives it the special ability to transcribe and translate foreign genetic material, something “higher”, more specialised plants cannot do.
This has important implications in the pharmaceutical industry. Current methods of producing protein, such as recombinant DNA technology, rely on bacteria which must be in an optimal environment to grow. This results in increased cost and as a result, unaffordable by much of the demographic. Moss, on the other hand, is a relatively forgiving plant, needing only the basics to survive, such as water, a few nutrients and light. This makes it an attractive alternative to the controlled conditions necessary in other methods. Overall however, exciting as this new development is, further research is necessary to determine the effectiveness and applicability of this new technique.
References:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090510200001.htm
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