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Show and Timothy C. Hall of the University of Wisconsin Madison used a bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaclens. This bacterium which causes crown gall disease in certain species of plants, has been called "Nature's genetic engineer" because it transfers a small piece of its genetic material into a host plant's cells. This genetic material then is Incorporated Into the plant cells and causes fundamental funda-mental changes in their genetic ge-netic makeup. Kemp said, "What we did was to turn the bacteria's exploitation of plant cells into a tool for the transfer trans-fer of genes useful to us." To do this, scientists em -ployed a form of piggy -backing. The strategy used in- . volved splicing the bean protein gene into a location loca-tion of the bacterium the scientists know is responsible responsi-ble for transmitting crown gall disease. The bacteria's normal infection mechanism was used to transfer the bean protein gene to the sunflower plant tissue. Kemp said although the bean protein is not yet being be-ing produced in the new ' 'sunbean" plant tissues, the scientists plan to modify their new methods until they attain high levels of protein pro-tein production. The next step is to regenerate re-generate a sunflower plant from the cells in the tissue cultures. The technology to do this is not yet available nor do they know exactly ex-actly the effect the bean gene will have on regenerated sunflower plants. These developments are; yet to come. They may not come quickly or easily, Kemp said. However, he said, he and his colleagues will continue their pioneering pioneer-ing work, which they characterize charac-terize as "laying the groundwork ground-work for 21st century agriculture." agri-culture." This announcement closely close-ly follows one made by Block1 June 18 on using genetic engineering to produce a vaccine effective against the' virus of .foot -and -mouth disease. Scientists norEi .id plant none Secretary of Agriculture, John R. Block today announced announ-ced development of a technology techno-logy for moving genes from one kind of plant to another. "This breakthrough a-chievement a-chievement opens a whole new era in plant genetics," Block said. "It is the first step toward the day when scientists will be able to increase in-crease the nutritive value of plants, to make plants resistant resis-tant to disease and environmental environ-mental stresses, and make them capable of fixing nitrogen ni-trogen from the air." Block said scientists of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Ag-riculture and University of Wisconsin have opened the way to a new medium for the genetic engineering of plants to creating variations vari-ations not now available because be-cause of sterility barriers between species and genera. What the . scientists have done Is to transfer a gene that directs the production of major protein from Its native location in the French bean seed into the foreign environment of a sunflower cell. They call the new plant tissue "sunbean." The gene is stable in its new environment and is producing pro-ducing messenger RNA. Messenger RNA is the cellular cel-lular vehicle that carries genetic information from the genes to the protein -synthesizing machinery of the cell. The scientists now are looking for and hope soon to see the production of the bean protein In the "sunbean." "sun-bean." To achieve the genetic transfer, research teams, led by biochemists John D. Kemp of USDA's Agricultural Ag-ricultural Research Service |