Tobacco has found the holy grail

[AndrewNR]

So some Scientists in Germany have found a way to make Tobacco plants seemingly grow indefinitely and continue to grow reasonable looking young leaves.

Could we one day be smoking cigars made from a Tobacco plant older than the curing of the leaves etc?

Geneticists create tobacco plants with "eternal youth".

Typically tobacco plants have quite a short life, around 4 months of growth followed by blooming, flowering and death. They usually reach a height of around 1.5 to 2 metres tall before older leaves begin to yellow and wither and flowering happens. One gene appears to be responsible for the transition from blooming to flowering, and by switching it off researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME (Münster, Germany) have created seemingly immortal (and continually growing) plants.

"The first of our tobacco plants is now almost eight years old but it still just keeps on growing and growing,” Dirk Prüfer, one of the researchers. "Although we regularly cut it, it's six-and-a-half meters [21 ft.] tall. If our greenhouse were a bit higher, it would probably be even bigger. Its stem is already ten centimeters in diameter." The team have named their modified species "forever young".

The researchers were able to create these huge changes by altering the gene's expression and then reinserting it back into the plant using a bacterium. They hope that this technique can be used to generate larger amounts of biomass and are currently working on developing a potato plant with a team in Japan. Results such as this hold great potential benefits in creating more foodstuffs and plant-based materials, and the inability to flower means they cannot spread to unwanted areas.

Photo: Dirk Prüfer, Gundula Noll (right) and Lena Harig (left) with some of their plants. Credit to Fraunhofer IME.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news...-young.html#jCp

The life of tobacco plants is short. They grow for around three to four months, followed by flowering and then die. Their size is also limited, with plants only growing to about one-and-a-half to two meters tall. Now, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME in Münster have located the tobacco plant's very own fountain of youth, which means they can keep it forever young. The Münster-based researchers discovered a genetic switch which can prevent the plants from change blooming to flowering. This also averts the plants' early change demise to senescence – and suppresses the factor that halts growth. "The first of our tobacco plants is now almost eight years old but it still just keeps on growing and growing," says Professor Dirk Prüfer, head of the Department of Functional and Applied Genomics at the IME. "Although we regularly cut it, it's six-and-a-half meters tall. If our greenhouse were a bit higher, it would probably be even bigger. Its stem is already ten centimeters in diameter." Whereas in normal tobacco plants the leaves, which grow from the bottom of the stem, soon turn yellow and drop off, the IME plant's leaves stay healthy and green. This is why the scientists have christened their modified plant species "forever young". But what exactly do researchers do to give the plants eternal youth and make them capable of unbounded growth? "We modify the expression of a certain gene – or rather, the information contained within it – so that the plant's flowering is delayed," explains Prüfer. Researchers then insert the modified gene back into the plant using a bacterium. The role of the bacterium is to act as a sort of shuttle service for the modified gene.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news...-young.html#jCp

[CaptainQuintero]

This isn't good news for those of us who dislike the trend for bigger and fatter cigars!

[Trevor2118]

Also.....not good news for the anti-smoking lobby.

[papatrips]

That male scientist seems to be enjoying his job!

[CaptainQuintero]

Newsflash: 10cm diameter stems found in plugged 2015 edicion limitada Montecristo 1080!

[AndrewNR]

It's certainly an interesting concept. I am wondering what the new leaves would be like on an old plant..

[mk05]

genetically modified? Guaranteed cancer if you smoke this tobacco? uh oh!

[Maplepie]

bump.

where are we with this, now?

[dubleuhb]

Plants are now 30 feet tall.^^^^^^

[CaptainQuintero]

Germany ad a nation has ceased to exist, a sentient form of Habano 2000 rules in a generally feudalistic society, only opposed by a hardcore group of anti-smoking zealots who ironically battle the ruling plants by ambushing lone plants and setting them on fire.

[sengjc]

That male scientist seems to be enjoying his job!

Tobacco and chicks is enough to make any male enjoy his job.