Modified

From hacking bacteria to blasting your way into the heart of the cell, in this episode we explore the ways to get a transgene into a plant cell and go from there to a whole genetically engineered plant. 

Herrera-Estrella L. My journey into the birth of plant transgenesis and its impact on modern plant biology. Plant Biotechnol J. 2020

Chimeric Genes as Dominant Selectable Markers in Plant Cells. Herrera-Estrella et al., 1983, the EMBO Journal. - First publication of delivering a recombinant T-DNA plasmid into plant cells.

History of Plant Tissue Culture. Trevor A Thorpe. University of Calgary

Current Advancement and Future Prospects in Simplified Transformation Based Plant Genome Editing. Han et al., Plants (Basel). 2025 - Review of plant transformation techniques. 

Deep Dive into Plant Transformation: Protoplast Mediated, Biolistic, Agrobacterium Mediated Gene Transfer. Dr Adriana Gallego. GoldBio.  - Article about different plant transformation methods. 

How did a few labs in the San Francisco area transform our relationship to life itself?

Guidelines for Hybrid DNA Molecules - Maxine Singer and Dieter Soll - Science, 1973

Potential Biohazards of Recombinant DNA Molecules - Berg et al., Science, 1974

Electron Micrograph of plasmid DNA, 1967

Valentine remembered for visionary thinking that transformed agriculture - Trina Kleist, 2023

What actually is plant breeding and how did it become so deeply intertwined with genetics?

Learn what sushi and sugar beets can teach us about how to turn a plant into a crop and how this connects to GMOs. 

Ant plants, Chameleon plants, and skinny-peel mangoes. Let's dive into your questions and I'll do my best to answer them. 

Leaf Mimicry in a Climbing Plant Protects Against Herbivory - Gianoli & Carrasco-Urra - Current Biology, 2014

Boquila trifoliata Mimics Leaves of an Artificial Plastic Host Plant - White & Yamashita - Plant Signaling & Behavior, 2021

Endophytic Bacterial Communities are Associated with Leaf Mimicry in the Vine Boquila trifoliata - Gianoli et al. - Scientific Reports, 2021

How the Tulip Breaking Virus Created Striped Tulips - Wong, Carrero & Hillen - Communications Biology, 2025

Start of the Art of Dahlia Breeding - A dissertation by Karen Renae Bender - Iowa State University, 2022

The Genome Evolution and Domestication of Tropical Fruit Mango - Wang et al. - Genome Biology, 2020

How do plants defend themselves, fighting a war of attrition cell by cell? And how did a scientist in Minnesota in the 1950s reshape how we understand plant immune systems and the genetics at their heart. And of course, how does this all connect to GMOs? Let's find out. 

References

What are these little bundles of DNA we call genes and how does a bunch of genes work together to make a whole plant? In this episode we’ll take a journey through plant genetics and see why scientists have been so keen to unlock these secrets and ultimately to shape them to human ends. 

Around the same time as Miescher was tinkering with DNA in Tubingen castle, a middle aged friar-scientist Gregor Mendel was experimenting with inheritance of pea plants. He was the first to define a set of mathematical rules behind inheritance that birthed the field of genetics - a field that lay dormant for a few decades before exploding in the 1900s, and continues to develop to this day. Genetics gives us the tools to reshape the living world with intention and at speed. 

References:

1. Versuche über Pflanzenhybriden. Zwei Abhandlungen. (1865 und 1869.) Von Gregor Mendel. Herausgegeben von Erich Tschermak [Experiments in Plant Hybridization. Two Treatments. (1865 and 1869). By Gregor Mendel. Published by Erich Tschermak. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hs118q&seq=7

2. Gregor Mendel and his Precusors. Conway Zirkle. 1951. https://www.jstor.org/stable/226964?seq=1

3.  Bateson W. (1906) "The progress of genetic research" Report of the Third International Conference 1906 on Genetics, W. Wilks, ed. London, England: Royal Horticultural Society. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/206746#page/129/mode/1up 

4. Fairbanks, D.J. Demystifying the mythical Mendel: a biographical review. Heredity 129, 4–11 (2022). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41437-022-00526-0 

Genes can be a metaphor for our sense of self. But they are also real, physical, things made up of DNA parts, locked inside the cells of every living organism. In this episode we explore the materiality of genes, as well as some of the human stories behind the science. 

Waclaw Szybalski on Martha Chase - Cold Spring Harbor laboratory - Oral history collections. 

Martha Chase at the University of Rochester: The Woman in STEM Who Was Forgotten. The Journal of Undergraduate Research - University of Rochester. Spring 2024, Volume 22, Issue 2. Michelle A. Bischoff ‘24, Xuke Wang, Erin Song, Gabrielle Wilson, Monica Brody, Suchi Iyer, Kirya Caine, and Michael Clark*

The roots of today’s genetically modified world stretch back two centuries, to a castle kitchen in Southern Germany. This episode will set the stage for our whole podcast introducing key themes and foundational concepts of genetics and molecular biology.