| Biofuels from Engineered Tobacco Plants? | | | | of seeds per acre. Dr. Andrianov and his colleagues |
| A biofuel is tricky to define because the usual fossil | | | | aim to find ways so that the tobacco leaves produce |
| fuel we use, is in a way biofuel too. But we can | | | | more oil. |
| safely say that most of the biofuels don't add up | | | | A usual tobacco plant leave has 1.7 percent to 4 |
| their quota of carbon dioxide to the environment. | | | | percent of oil per dry weight. The researchers |
| The biofuels are therefore considered to be "CO2 | | | | modified two genes of the plant. They are the |
| neutral." Researchers from the Biotechnology lenovo | | | | diacyglycerol acytransferase (DGAT) gene or the |
| thinkpad x61 battery Foundation Laboratories at | | | | LEAFY COTYLEDON 2 (LEC2) gene. The plants were |
| Thomas Jefferson University have developed a new | | | | engineered to over express one of the two genes. |
| method to increase the quantity of oil in tobacco | | | | The alteration of DGAT gene resulted in about 5.8 |
| leaves. So that oil in tobacco leaves can be utilized as | | | | percent of oil per dry weight in the leaves. It is |
| biofuels in future. Their paper was published in Plant | | | | around twice the amount of oil produced by and |
| Biotechnology Journal which is an online journal. | | | | large. When the researcher went for the LEC2 gene |
| Vyacheslav Andrianov is a Ph.D. and assistant | | | | modification it yielded around 6.8 percent of oil per |
| professor of Cancer Biology at Jefferson Medical | | | | dry weight. |
| College of Thomas Jefferson University. According to | | | | According to Dr. Andrianov, "Tobacco is very |
| him tobacco can produce biofuel more efficiently than | | | | attractive as a biofuel because the idea is to use |
| other agricultural crops. But there is a hitch. When we | | | | plants that aren't used in food production. We have |
| try to extract oil lenovo ideapad y430 battery, most | | | | found ways to genetically engineer the plants so that |
| of it is available in tobacco seeds. Statistics say that | | | | their leaves express more oil. In some instances, the |
| tobacco seeds are composed of about 40 percent oil | | | | modified plants produced 20-fold more oil in the |
| per dry weight. Another snag is tobacco plants don't | | | | leaves. |
| produce seeds in copious amounts. It is about 600 kg | | | | |