CSHL-Mexican team coaxes sexually reproducing plant to brink of asexual reproduction
Saturday, March 20, 2010 - 09:14
in Biology & Nature
One seemingly insurmountable obstacle to the dream of virtually limitless yields of staple crops like corn, wheat and rice is the dependence of those plants on sexual reproduction. When male and female gametes - sperm and egg - combine randomly to generate a genetically unique seed, valuable parental traits painstakingly selected by breeders are erased. But what if plants like these could be engineered to reproduce asexually - an ability of a subset of plants, for example the common dandelion?...