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Article: Rooting for gossypol: intriguing cotton roots make a compound that could benefit agriculture--and even medicine.
- Article from:
- Agricultural Research
- Article date:
- July 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 U.S. Government Printing Office. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Plant physiologist Barbara Triplett understands how opportunity can arise even as disease strikes.
In her New Orleans, Louisiana, laboratory, she's pricked a cotton seedling's tender, new leaf with a toothpick, purposely injecting a bacterium that will cause stubs to sprout from the wound sites. In just a few weeks, these stubs will become tendrils of fine, waving roots.
These so-called hairy roots owe their dramatic growth to a particular kind of disease-causing bacterium found in soil, Rhizobium rhizogenes.
"Once the bacterium invades plant leaf cells, it signals them to create lots of hairy roots," explains Triplett, who works at ARS's ...