Word: rhizobium
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Indeed, the ability to track recombinant bacteria through the environment has become a crucial factor in getting EPA approval for a release. The lack of an effective marker has, for example, held up a test by Biotechnica International, a Cambridge, Mass., firm, of Rhizobium bacteria altered to boost their ability to fix nitrogen in the soil. In one of the California ice- minus tests, however, scientists have been able to monitor the spread of anti- icing bacteria on potato plants. The marker system in this case was rifampicin resistance, less sensitive than Monsanto's multiple indicator but still able...
Disturbing new evidence emerged last week that Strobel had released altered bacteria into the environment prior to his experiment with the elms. In an Aug. 10 letter to the EPA, Strobel admitted he had released a "new strain of Rhizobium meliloti . . . in South Dakota, Montana, California and Nebraska in 1983-84." The Rhizobium had been altered to enhance nitrogen fixation in alfalfa plants. Though it is not yet clear that those experiments violated regulations in force at the time, they are under investigation by Montana State...
There are other attractions. As a legume, the winged bean converts its own nitrogen from the atmosphere, thanks to a happy symbiosis with guest Rhizobium bacteria in the plant's potato-like tubers. Consequently, it needs no fertilizer and even enriches the soil in which it grows. Any parts picky humans do not want to eat can be fed to cattle. As Horticulturist Jack Kelly of the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agriculture Sciences puts it, "It's like the butcher's pig. Everything's useful but the oink...
NITROGEN FIXATION. At present only legumes such as peas, beans and alfalfa-with the aid of a soil-dwelling bacterium called rhizobium-are known to be naturally capable of fixing nitrogen from the air-joining it to other substances to form compounds necessary for plant growth. Most other plants must obtain their nitrogen from natural and man-made fertilizers. But scientists are seeking to give more plants this nitrogen-fixing ability. At Utah's Brigham Young University, biologists are attempting to "infect" other species of plants with rhizobia. Scientists in England have isolated the segment of the rhizobial...
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