You are a tomato farmer whose crops are threatened by a persistent species of beetle. Each year, you spend large sums of money for pesticides to protect your crops. A biotechnology company introduces a new strain of tomato plant that produces a natural pesticide, making it resistant to the beetle. By switching to this new strain, you could avoid both the beetle and the chemical pesticides traditionally needed to fight it. (From LearnGenetics)
The gene that produces the pesticide which is toxic to beetles but not to humans is found in certain bacteria. This scenario depends on taking the gene from the bacteria and moving it into the plants.
How would you accomplish this goal? Check each step that is necessary for this genetic engineering project to work:
Find the bacteria that produce a toxin that will kill the beetle but not harm vertebrates like humans.
Find the gene in the bacteria that codes for the toxin and cut it out of the bacteria.
Put the toxin gene into a plasmid vector (see Ch. 10) along with an antibiotic resistance gene.
Introduce the plasmid to different bacteria in the lab, which multiply vigorously, thus copying the plasmid billions of times.
Collect large amounts of the plasmid that the lab bacteria copied.
Coat gold pellets with these plasmids.
Shoot the pellets into plant cells using a gene gun.
Grow the plant cells into plants, which will now have the toxin gene in them.
