My interest in flower colour began. I utilized to paint blue flowers in school, and my instructor constantly asked why, due to the fact that many flowers here aren’t naturally blue.
Now, for my PhD, at Wageningen University & & Research in the Netherlands, I’m studying colour in petunias. In this image, I’m gathering flower tissue samples from a white petunia to evaluate its pigments and the genes behind them. I’m using gloves and utilizing forceps so I do not harm the tissue for the hereditary analysis.
White petunias exist in nature, however not intense orange and yellow ones. In 2015, among my PhD advisors, Teemu Teeri, discovered an orange petunia growing at a train station near Helsinki. He found that its colour was because of an unapproved genetic engineering, and the sale of such plants became prohibited in some nations.
I aspired to develop orange petunias not by presenting a gene from another types, however by repairing the hereditary path that stops petunias being naturally orange. The gene-editing innovation CRISPR– Cas9 lets me do this by making modifications at exact places in the petunia’s genome. It’s much faster, more affordable, more precise and more effective than other genome-editing techniques, and it’s legal in Europe and the United States. My work can likewise be used to other crops. Golden rice (
