Word: plants
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...sounds like a child's riddle: What do you get when you cross a firefly with a tobacco plant? Answer: tobacco that lights itself. That is essentially what a team of scientists at the University of California at San Diego has done. By outfitting a fragment of a plant virus with the gene that tells firefly cells to produce a protein central to generating light, the researchers have created a plant that literally glows in the dark...
...week's issue of the journal Science, is significant not so much as a demonstration of virtuoso genetic engineering, but because it will provide scientists with a valuable research tool for studying how genes go about their business. By fusing the firefly gene to the genetic material of other plants and animals, biologists gain a visual cue $ that will help them understand in detail how genes -- strands of DNA whose structure acts as a sort of coded instruction manual -- tell different cells what their duties are within an organism. Armed with such specific knowledge, researchers may someday understand exactly...
...instructions necessary to grow hair, for example, and a bone cell to transmit information as a nerve does. The reason these things do not happen is that the instructions -- the genes -- are switched on only under very specific conditions. If researchers can fuse the firefly gene to specific plant or animal genes, they will be able to monitor the "expression," or turning on, of those genes simply by looking at what parts of the organism light up, and when...
...another competitive fly-off has been inflicted on the Air Force, this time mainly by New York Congressmen and Senators. After lengthy study, the Air Force had decided it did not want to buy a new T-46A trainer, designed by Fairchild Republic at its development plant on New York's Long Island. The Air Force argued that it could save $2 billion by upgrading its current T-37 trainer, built by Cessna in Kansas, rather than buying 650 of the newer planes...
...Mass. One Smith & Wesson model broke down before firing 5,000 rounds, while another cracked at 7,000. By contrast, the Beretta triggered 8,800 rounds without a mishap. After the Army signed a contract for 300,000 Berettas, which would be produced at the company's Accokeek, Md., plant for $75 million, Massachusetts Congressmen, including Democrat Edward Boland and Republican Silvio Conte, sought to reopen bids for a second batch of pistols, this time for 206,000. Congress compromised, forcing the Army to test the Smith & Wesson yet again...