Hairy root disease

Guest · Tue Feb 15, 2005 9:10 pm

Look here:

http://www.esf.edu/efb/course/EFB530/lectures/agrobact.htm

Guest · Tue Feb 15, 2005 11:05 pm

Look here!

http://www.csiro.au/index.asp?type=mediaRelease&id=HairyRoots&xml=relatedMediaReleases;count=100;start=0&style=mediaRelease

This sounds encouraging to me. It seems that valuable ingredients of plants are also in the "hairy roots" as in the "normal" grown ones.
Might even work for for ephedra.

/ORG

jimwig · Wed Feb 16, 2005 8:34 pm

man this is very exciting stuff. imagine a greenhouse growing sassafrass roots by the megagram!!!!

i am an idiot BUT an open minded one.

dr organikkum - please share more with us. I for one could launch in a microexperimental mode within moments. (simile)

very very promising.

jimwig

edit --"Agrobacterium-mediated transformation is only effective among plants that the bacterium can infect

* this includes most dicots"--

seems our tree is indeed a dicot!!!

MargaretThatcher · Thu Feb 17, 2005 3:22 am

This is very interesting. Apparently, bacterial DNA becomes integrated into the plant genome via a plasmid and causes a cancer-like condition in the plant. The same thing happens with crown-gall disease.

MargaretThatcher · Thu Feb 17, 2005 6:55 am

This seems to be the strain being used (although there are many varieties):

Rhizobium rhizogenes

http://www.dsmz.de/species/sp200090.htm

I suspect you would need some kind of hydroponic style system with bubbler, temperature control and balanced nutrients to grow the roots.

stooge · Mon Feb 21, 2005 2:49 pm

hey - don't want to bother, but - this might also work with poppy roots, i guess?!?

**edit:*******
oh well, of course it's again nearly impossible to obtain these things without being an official lab-whatever ...
i hate them Evil or Very Mad

stooge · Wed Feb 23, 2005 1:50 pm

what i wonder is, if it might be possible to grow plants in water with nutrients alone without drowning them - even if it takes much longer it might still be worth the while in my eyes. it seems pretty useless to me, but if it works with agrobacteria i think i'll give it a try, even if i feel a little dull with that...
in the end it's nothing else than hydroponics only without the "stones" ...
hm, no clue. will report if it works anyhow.

stooge · Sat Mar 12, 2005 3:48 am

loki · guinea pig

forgot to mention mimosa hostilis and acacia obtusifolia here, as well as desmanthus illinoensis here...

It can't be that hard to get a hold of this organism to promote this disease in roots of plants, surely (?)

syrian rue produces useful amounts of alkaloids in its roots too...

perhaps there is other means to promote this kind of cancer-like illness in a plant than bacteria, seems like a recipe for disaster for the average plant enthusiast to infect one plant with it, before you know it everything will be infected.

edit: i read somewhere that an excess of boron in the nutrients fed to a plant can promote excessive bulking out of plants (just wanted to add this as it may be relevant)

cascabel · Fri Apr 08, 2005 1:48 pm

Hello!

Agrobacterium tumefaciens, a.k.a the crown gall bacillus, in itself, will not yield the edible roots. The Japanese team, if I understand their procedure correctly, used a genetically-modified strain of Agrobacterium for their experiment. I do not think, however, that genetic modification is in the grasp of the home chemist as of yet. Crying or Very sad

MargaretThatcher explained in an earlier post how the crown-gall bacillus performs genetic modification on the plant, so I will not elaborate further. It is my understanding that what made the infected roots edible was whatever was inserted into the bacterial plasmids.

QUOTE:
"...roots are grown in tanks of water with nutrients..."

That would be the subject of hydroponics. Wink

the cascabel (^_^)

MargaretThatcher · Fri Apr 08, 2005 4:39 pm

Rhizobium/agrobacterium are different names for the same species. The bacterium is naturally occuring in the soil and enters the root through injuries to cause hairy root disease. I imagine it would be very difficult to isolate and culture without expert knowledge. Commercial strains are available.