Blue chrysanthemums

Geneticists received GM chrysanthemums with blue flowers

Sergey Vasiliev, Naked Science

Real blue flowers are rare in nature, they are found only in some plant species. Most of the colors that we used to call blue are, strictly speaking, purple or magenta. Despite millennia of breeding attempts, obtaining blue flowers is still an urgent task: for example, blue roses were created only in 2004 with the help of genetic modification.

The fact is that shades from red to blue in the petals of plants are created by anthocyanin pigments. A particular color of a flower arises depending on the set of functional groups of its anthocyanins and on a number of conditions inside the plant cell itself, so that a simple transfer of the gene of the desired anthocyanin from a blue flower to a pink one almost never works.

So it turned out for the Japanese scientists from the Naonobu Noda team, who used the anthocyanin gene from the blue bell (Campanula medium), transferring it to red chrysanthemums (Chrysanthemum) and resulting in purple-purple flowers. Another gene had to be borrowed from another plant with blue flowers, Clitoria (Clitoria ternatea). It was a gene of a protein, an enzyme that catalyzes additional chemical modification of the pigment and its transformation into delphinidin – a blue anthocyanin found in the flowers of the common larkspur (Delphinium).

According to the authors, whose article is published by the journal Science Advances (Noda et al., Generation of blue chrysanthemums by anthocyanin B-ring hydroxylation and glucosylation and its coloring mechanism), they expected that a truly blue color would require further work, but two genes turned out to be enough: GM chrysanthemums gave full-fledged tones – from light- blue to deep blue.

Now their task will be to refine a unique variety of flowers so that they cannot reproduce in natural conditions and cannot accidentally spread in nature. Then you will need to go through the official certification procedure, only then the first blue chrysanthemums will appear in bouquets.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  27.07.2017