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World's First True Blue Rose, Thanks to Biotech
FiReaNGeL writes "Researchers from CSRIO achieved the holy grail of rose breeders since 1840 - breeding a blue rose. Using RNAi technology, they knocked down the red pigment gene and introduced a blue pigment producing one. The result is the world's first true blue rose - no word about whether it'll be commercially available or not. A factsheet describing the technique and a detailed summary are available."
That's neat.
Hope they sell some at an affordable price. My grandmother would get a real kick out of it.
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If they've genetically modified it, is it still a rose?
I could draw an image of it too... You would think that with the technology of the Internet and all, and since they are talking about some tangible item that supposedly exists, couldn't we have a picture? Even a forgery would do.
I guess that puts us just that much closer to authentic blue hair.
Direct away from face when opening.
I want some blue roses for a red lady.
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They did not "breed" a blue rose, they messed with the genes to make a blue rose, I am sure most breeders would consider this cheating.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Where's the picture? Is this a Vaporware Gene?
Violets are blue Now thanks to biotech Roses are too
http://www.physorg.com/news3581.html
It seems kind of like cheating. :-).
The gene for the blue pigment is presumably from another organism; they could equally make them some other colour, or make them glow in the dark (bioluminescence has been "ported" to organisms such as mice before
This would be more impressive if it was done by selective breeding...
Still, could be the first really mass-produced "novelty" GM organisms (anyone buy one of those fish? Thought not).
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
Roses are blue
..oh I give up someone finish this one off for me
violets are green
in Soviet Russia
no word about whether it'll be commercially available or not.
Go back and RTFA:
Commercial availability
Florigene has already successfully created blue carnations using gene technology and these have been available in Australia since 1996.
It will be at least 3 years before blue roses will be commercially available in Australia, pending approval from the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator for their commercial release.
I am waiting until they can manage day-glo colors.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
How about a picture of THE STINKING ROSE!! PROVE IT! Illustrations don't cut the mustard...
/. How about a screenshot of a blue rose.
Oh, this is
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I think we should have a vote on this one. How about: 1) "Have a bad day" 2) "I'm breaking up with you" 3) "This rose cost a sh** load of cash, you better like it" 4) "I still don't want to marry you, so instead of a ring..." 5) "I am red/blue colorblind and I still don't care about roses"
a Frankenflower.
It's all fun and games until someone loses the key to the handcuffs.
"although the prototype is pale mauve, it is the first rose in the world with the genetic potential to produce 'true blue' roses, spanning the spectrum from palest blue to Mediterranean blue, or even navy blue."
and this:
"The new rose is an attractive shade of mauve, similar to the current generation of mauve-lilac roses like 'Blue Moon' and 'Vol de Nuit'. But where these cultivars express cyanidin, and are thus incapable of yielding blue flowers, the new rose, with further 'tweaking', has the genetic potential to be truly blue.
Blue shades should be achievable if Florigene and Suntory researchers can make the rose's petals less acidic. Rose petals are moderately acidic, with a pH around 4.5, while carnation petals are less so, with a pH of 5.5."
So unless this story is old and that picture is really new, I'm guessing it is fake or just an "artist's conception."
IANAL, but I play one on
Here is the post I made to an earlier request for photos:
my post
Basically, they now have the chance to produce blue roses but haven't actually done it yet. The new roses are mauve.
IANAL, but I play one on
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
...too bad they couldn't do it by breeding alone.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
This blue rose reminds me of you,
Beautiful and artificial.
They use siRNA to turn off the color genes.
SiRNA is a RNA that is maintained by the host completly seperate from the genome. It happens to compliment the RNA of the target gene and therefore inhibits expression.
SiRNA is not stable long term. THese roses will slowly revert to the original levels of Red/Orange with blue tossed in as well.
To make this permenent you will need to deactivate the color genes on the genome level rather than the cytoplasmic/transcription level.
Wait till they get the black rose perfected. Then the goth's will all love biotech. Can you imagine going into a lab with folks who look like they've been smacked in the face with a tackle box, wearing black finger nail polish, and trech coats genetically engineering so they can turn every flower black?
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
When I first saw the picture of the roses in TFA I immediately imagined some ostentatious pre-teen rose walking around a chocolate factory eating things she wasn't supposed to.
If I'm not mistaken, there was no pure red rose. The roses of the time were crossbred with a red asian flower to get the red hue available today. If anything this modified version is closer to the rose it was created from than a red rose itself.
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
Now, i don't know where the marketing droids in these bio tech come from but they obviously are not up to date with the modern tech naming conventions. It should obviously be i-RNA
With that aggravating beauty, Lulu Walls.
A truly blue rose has been the Holy Grail of rose breeders since 1840, when the horticultural societies of Britain and Belgium offered a prize of 500,000 francs to the first person to produce a blue rose.
I guess the horticultural societies of Britain and Belgium owe the CSIRO 500,000 francs.
The result is the world's first true blue rose - no word about whether it'll be commercially available or not. "Commercial availability Florigene has already successfully created blue carnations using gene technology and these have been available in Australia since 1996. It will be at least 3 years before blue roses will be commercially available in Australia, pending approval from the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator for their commercial release." From the bottom of the first site. :-)
Smurfette managed this 20 years ago.
How long until they make a black lotus? And would this be considered copyright infringement?
the technique and a detailed summary are available."
a summary with detail huh?
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Im a systematic biologist and do research using cladistics. Cladistics is about finding the phylogenetic tree (or pedigree) that requires the minimum amount of evoultionary events.
Obligatory Wikipedia article
A rose with a gene replaced would still be a rose, as it continues to share so many charcteristics of the unmanipulated rose such as flower morphology, chromosome number, leaf symmetry etc.
Is horse a differet clades than a donkey? I'm guessing probably so. Is a Red Wolf a different clades than a Coyote? Hard to say -- they hybridize after all to produce fertile offspring. Is the Eastern Yellow Bellied Sapsucker a different clades than a Western? Probably not.
Clades seem to me to be as much as social convention as species, only with a somewhat more sound theoretical basis for selecting features to consider. My impression is that genotypes exist in a kind of gene space in which contiguous volumes of that space are conventionally grouped into taxonomic categories for purposes of interpreting published papers.
I'd be interested in hearing if there are more precise criteria for deciding on what constitues a clades. The layman's articles I've read don't make this clear, including the wiki you linked. For example, it says,
At first blush, this seems perfectly clear. Except that it ignores the fact that there are a distribution of features in a population of animals of the same species. Almost if you were to look at a node in the cladogram with a microsocope, you'd see countless tiny brances on the tree that merge and split.
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OK, I might not pay that much more for a blue rose, but a blue rose that glows in the dark... now that sounds like an interesting idea to try...