Despite their gaping lack of human or even animal geneticists, the exclusively plant-oriented genetics program at BYU really does make significant contributions toward solving world-wide agricultural problems. Instead of immediately deleting my copy of alumni news I actually opened it and saw this article. I know that in addition to working on growing these plants in salty conditions, they have also been making significant progress toward isolating the salt-tolerant gene (which codes for an intermembrane protein that essentially "pumps" salt out of the cells) in hopes of being able to incorperate it into the genome of some of the cereal grains to allow their growth in salty environments as well. Cool huh? Even I think that's exciting.
So, way to go all you professors who I loved but just couldn't bring myself to do research with. Plants aren't for me, but thanks for being so excited about them (and believe me, all of them are absolutely CRAZY about their plants). Thanks for continuing to make these kinds of contributions which significantly affect global health and nutrition.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
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