BRENT: Scientists have discovered a gene within an Australian plant which could open the door for space-based food production.
The gene is in the Nicotiana benthamiana, a type of native tobacco plant known as Pitjuri to indigenous Australians.
Plant geneticist Peter Waterhouse made the discovery while tracing the history of the Pitjuri plant, which for decades has been used by geneticists as a model plant to test viruses and vaccines.
“This plant is the laboratory rat of the molecular plant world,” says Professor Waterhouse of QUT.
“We think of it as a magical plant with amazing properties. We now know that in 1939 its seeds were sent by an Australian scientist to a scientist in America and have been passed from lab to lab all over the world.”
In the latest research, scientists sequenced the plant’s genome. They found that the original plant came from the Granites area near the Western Australia and Northern Territory border, close to where the movie Wolf Creek was filmed.
“We know, through using a molecular clock and fossil records, that this particular plant has survived in its current form in the wild for around 750,000 years,” he says.
Professor Waterhouse explains the importance of the discovery of the DNA sequence within an Australian tobacco plant.
