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Rabies Antibodies From Tobacco Plants

Posted by timothy on from the smokin' dept.

Makarand writes "The tobaccco plant has been genetically engineered to produce rabies antibodies. After the DNA coding for the human antibody against rabies was inserted into the plant, rabies antibodies were found in the plant extract. These antibodies were effective in binding to and neutralising the rabies virus in animal tests with no adverse or allergic reactions."

3 of 47 comments (clear)

  1. Re:No surprise by jericho4.0 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Tobacco has long been used for genetic fiddling because of the huge amount of work that went into it via the ciggarette companies, and our body of knowlrdge about the tobacco mosaic virus. I don't think there's anything about tobacco that makes it easir to work with, per se.

    --
    "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
  2. Smoke? by thomasmd · · Score: 2, Informative
    I hate to state the obvious and spoil all the hilarious comments here (which are undoubtedly meant to ridiculous), but cigarettes from the altered tobacco plants will of course NOT be smoked if you are bitten by a rabid dog. The leaves from the plants will be mushed up and the antibodies will be extracted, yielding a fluid for injection.

    This won't do anything for the cigarette industry, but this (and other work in tobacco) could very well help tobacco farmers. Tobacco is used not only because it is easy to introduce DNA into, but because it grows easily, fast, and has big leaves, allowing for high production of the protein of interest.

  3. Re:And corn, and other edibles by SiMac · · Score: 2, Informative

    Not just fatal, it is the only disease on Earth that is 100% fatal. The Ebola virus (specifically, Ebola Zaire) is the second most lethal, after it.