Big Tobacco: Geneticists Create a Plant That Can't Stop Growing

[microrobert]

Big Tobacco: Geneticists Create a Plant That Can't Stop Growing



Image Caption: Dirk Prüfer in the greenhouse with colleagues along with their tobacco plants.

In the comedy "Little Shop of Horrors," a carnivorous plant named Audrey Jr. grew nonstop by feasting on unsuspecting human beings. In a somewhat more benign development, researchers in Germany have developed tobacco plants that also can't stop growing.

Under normal conditions, the tobacco plant has a rather uninspiring lifespan. They grow for three or four months, according to Investor's Business Daily, reaching 6.5 feet (2 meters) in height at the most, while their older leaves turn yellow and fall off. After flowering, the plants die.

But researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology (IME) in Münster, Germany, have isolated the genetic switch that tells the tobacco plant to stop growing, flower and die. By suppressing that gene, the scientists have tricked the plants into growing like Jack's beanstalk — even the older leaves stay green and healthy.

Geneticists Create a Plant That Can't Stop Growing | Genetically Modified Tobacco | LiveScience

[Albion]

Can't stop growing until frost kills it that is. It would be a menace in tropical areas though, I don't understand how they could be so stupid as to create such a thing. Why are they breeding super-weeds?