We are currently surrounded by plants that have been modified, that is transformed by the introduction of one or more specific foreign genes. Each year American farmers plant over 88 million acres of crop plants genetically modified to confer insect resistance, herbicide resistance as well as resistance to viruses.

Plant transformation technology has the potential for producing salt and drought tolerant plants and plants with enhanced nutritional content. Plants can be engineered to more efficiently accumulate heavy metals or other pollutants for use in bioremediation efforts. Transformed plants can also be used as a production system for proteins such as antibodies, vaccines and enzymes.

This new technology also enables the use of new knowledge in genomics, proteomics and metabolomics to engineer plant metabolic pathways for both fundamental and practical applications.

What is plant transformation?

The stable introduction of genes into animals, plants and microbes to create transgenic organisms is a central technology in contemporary functional genomics research programs. Applied industrial biotechnology also relies heavily on transgenic technologies.

Plants are gaining attention as bioreactors for the production of protein based therapeutic agents and vaccines. In the production of pharmaceuticals, plants offer a low cost alternative to transgenic animals or cell lines, without the concerns associated with the crossover of animal pathogens to humans. Plants are also excellent candidates for use in the production of industrial enzymes, novel polymers and proteins for structure/function studies.