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Can Molecularly Engineered Plant Galls Help to Ease the Problem of World Food Shortage (and Our Dependence on Pollinating Insects)?

The world faces numerous problems and two of them are global food shortages and the dwindling number of pollinating insects. Plant products that do not arise from pollination are plant galls, which as in the case of oak apples, can resemble fruits and be the size of a cherry. It is suggested that on...

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Autor principal: Meyer-Rochow, Victor Benno
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9777877/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36553755
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/foods11244014
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author Meyer-Rochow, Victor Benno
author_facet Meyer-Rochow, Victor Benno
author_sort Meyer-Rochow, Victor Benno
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description The world faces numerous problems and two of them are global food shortages and the dwindling number of pollinating insects. Plant products that do not arise from pollination are plant galls, which as in the case of oak apples, can resemble fruits and be the size of a cherry. It is suggested that once research has understood how chemical signals from gall-inducing insects program a plant to produce a gall, it should be possible to mimic and to improve nature and “bioengineer” designer galls of different sizes, colorations and specific contents to serve as food or a source of medicinally useful compounds. To achieve this objective, the genes involved in the formation of the galls need to be identified by RNA-sequencing and confirmed by gene expression analyses and gene slicing. Ultimately the relevant genes need to be transferred to naïve plants, possibly with the aid of plasmids or viruses as practiced in crop productivity increases. There is then even the prospect of engineered plant galls to be produced by plant tissue culture via genetic manipulation without the involvement of insects altogether.
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spelling pubmed-97778772022-12-23 Can Molecularly Engineered Plant Galls Help to Ease the Problem of World Food Shortage (and Our Dependence on Pollinating Insects)? Meyer-Rochow, Victor Benno Foods Communication The world faces numerous problems and two of them are global food shortages and the dwindling number of pollinating insects. Plant products that do not arise from pollination are plant galls, which as in the case of oak apples, can resemble fruits and be the size of a cherry. It is suggested that once research has understood how chemical signals from gall-inducing insects program a plant to produce a gall, it should be possible to mimic and to improve nature and “bioengineer” designer galls of different sizes, colorations and specific contents to serve as food or a source of medicinally useful compounds. To achieve this objective, the genes involved in the formation of the galls need to be identified by RNA-sequencing and confirmed by gene expression analyses and gene slicing. Ultimately the relevant genes need to be transferred to naïve plants, possibly with the aid of plasmids or viruses as practiced in crop productivity increases. There is then even the prospect of engineered plant galls to be produced by plant tissue culture via genetic manipulation without the involvement of insects altogether. MDPI 2022-12-12 /pmc/articles/PMC9777877/ /pubmed/36553755 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/foods11244014 Text en © 2022 by the author. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Communication
Meyer-Rochow, Victor Benno
Can Molecularly Engineered Plant Galls Help to Ease the Problem of World Food Shortage (and Our Dependence on Pollinating Insects)?
title Can Molecularly Engineered Plant Galls Help to Ease the Problem of World Food Shortage (and Our Dependence on Pollinating Insects)?
title_full Can Molecularly Engineered Plant Galls Help to Ease the Problem of World Food Shortage (and Our Dependence on Pollinating Insects)?
title_fullStr Can Molecularly Engineered Plant Galls Help to Ease the Problem of World Food Shortage (and Our Dependence on Pollinating Insects)?
title_full_unstemmed Can Molecularly Engineered Plant Galls Help to Ease the Problem of World Food Shortage (and Our Dependence on Pollinating Insects)?
title_short Can Molecularly Engineered Plant Galls Help to Ease the Problem of World Food Shortage (and Our Dependence on Pollinating Insects)?
title_sort can molecularly engineered plant galls help to ease the problem of world food shortage (and our dependence on pollinating insects)?
topic Communication
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9777877/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36553755
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/foods11244014
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