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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."
http://www.physorg.com/news3581.html
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.
The way of talking about this that is in current vogue among biologists seems to be "cladistic analysis". All life forms are classified in a tree structure representing evolutionary pedigree. This is probably a gross simplification, but every genetic innovation creates a new branch (or clades). Some would argue that traditional taxonomic categories like genera and species are meaningless.
If you replace the red gene with a blue gene, you have developed a new clades. It is still substantially a rose, whether or not it smell sweet. Of course your mom might not call this thing a rose if it smelled like a skunk, so YMMV.
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picture here Florigene LTD
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