Australian scientists make key gene discovery 10 June 2010 Australian scientists have discovered the gene which regulates the size of a plant and also provides resistance against disease. The research found that plants which have resistance tend to be smaller than plants which do not because of a specific gene – ACD6. These findings have just been reported in the latest issue of the prestigious international scientific journal, Nature. The discovery will have important ramifications for green genetic engineering, providing further evidence on the importance of genetic diversity in agriculture. Dr Sureshkumar Balasubramanian from the University of Queensland said that scientists have known that plants that develop resistance to disease have offsetting characteristics. Dr Balasubramanian and other scientists were studying a plant called mouse-ear cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) to find the genes which control how quickly the plant can grow when they discovered that the slow growing plants carried an active form of the gene. The Queensland team found that there was a trade-off between slow growth and greater resistance, as the plants with this gene out-performed other plants against pathogens such as bacteria and fungus. Dr Balasubramanian said that this kind of trade-off also occurs in humans; for example, where people with sickle-cell anaemia carry a mutation in their haemoglobin gene that gives them resistance to malaria. More information |