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Published online 9 September 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.893
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Potato blight's gene weaponry revealed
Jumping genes may hold key to defeating mould that caused Irish famine.
The blight that caused the infamous Irish potato famine of the 1840s has yielded its genetic secrets. An international team has sequenced the DNA of the microorganism that was to blame.
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Certainly we can creat transgenics using genetic engineering from sequencing knowledge gained but in future Phytophthora infestans will develope new sets of transposable elements which will work as weapon against trasgenic developed.Thus transgenic itself will not be solution while fight between pathogen-plant-scientist will continue. Anurag chaurasia, ICAR, India, anurag@nbaim.org
What about a screening for a (bio-degradable) chemical substance that blocks transposase or whathever enzyme that causes the mould-transposons to move?
The DOI given for the Nature article (reference 2) should be doi:10.1038/nature08358 not 10.1038/nature0835 which is missing an eight at the end. And a link would be nice...
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature08358