For immediate release: December 15, 2003
For more information, contact Susan Griffith at 216-368-1004 or susan.griffith@case.edu

CLEVELAND—When hurricanes and other disasters wipe out a farmer's crop, they need a fast and quick way to replenish their fields with millions of plants. Most plants do not provide enough cuttings or sucker plants, but rapidly growing plant cells can be reproduced by the millions in culture to develop that plant stock.

Christopher Cullis

Plants grown in culture tend to produce mutants. Christopher Cullis, professor of biology at Case Western Reserve University, with Samantha Rademan, who is with Amersham in South Africa, and Karl Kunert from the University in Pretoria in South Africa have received a patent, "Method for Detecting Genomic Destabilization Arising During Tissue Culture of Plant Cells" to detect those malformed plants.

This patent is for the methodology of comparing the normal and mutant DNA from banana and date palm plants grown from cells in culture. Mutant plants do not occur from cuttings or sucker plants. It only happens when cells from the growth region of the plant are propagated in an unorganized mass in a culture and later spurred to grow with hormones and nutrients into a plant with roots, stem and leaves. His DNA marker methodology can monitor for mutants at each step of the process in growing cells into plants.

As a plant geneticist, Cullis has found that if certain points on the DNA vary from normal DNA, the plant will be malformed. This methodology can be applied to a single plant or to a representative sample of the cells being grown into new plants. If a small percentage appears as mutant, Cullis said farmers may plant all of the stock from the batch of cells or scrap it, while if a larger percentage are bad, they may chose to destroy the lot before they invest the time and expense of attempting to grow the crop.

While the markers exist for the banana and date palm plants, Cullis plans to expand the DNA marker methodology crop by crop. He sees this as particular helpful for companies that reforest lands and where it might take decades before the growers realize they have sterile and mutant trees.

Without the methodology of comparing mutant and normal DNA from these plants, Cullis said it could take as long as nine months for a banana farmer to discover that his plant does not bloom or up to seven years for the date palm. Such a disaster with oil palms happened during the 1980s, and whole crops had to be destroyed, added Cullis.

While the university owns the patent for Cullis' work developed while he was on sabbatical in South Africa in 1997, Cullis is the chief executive officer of NovoMark Technologies that will license the technology. The company is located in the Enterprise Development, Inc.

About Case Western Reserve University

Case is among the nation's leading research institutions. Founded in 1826 and shaped by the unique merger of the Case Institute of Technology and Western Reserve University, Case is distinguished by its strengths in education, research, and service. Located in Cleveland, Case offers nationally recognized programs in the Arts and Sciences, Dentistry, Engineering, Law, Management, Medicine, Nursing, and Social Sciences. http://www.case.edu.

 

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