Common Sense for the Biochemist

In an upcoming Nature Biotechnology issue, Mentewab Ayalew and C. Neal Stewart, Jr. from the Univeristy of Tennessee will report on the use of an ABC transporter gene from Arabidopsis to confer Kanamycin resistance in tobacco. Kanamycin resistance is used as a selectable marker in plant transformation. Usually, a resistance gene is linked to the gene of interest. Plants that are then shown to be resistant to an antibiotic, the selectable marker, will also contain the gene of interest. Usually, this antibiotic resistance gene has come from bacteria, which raises concerns that the gene could be horizontally transfered to native bacteria or other plants. Because this new gene is an ABC transporter normally found in plants, this concern is muted. A copy of the paper can be found here.