From mgs23@pacbell.net Tue Dec 21 14:47:13 1999 Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1999 10:46:05 -0800 From: Misha To: SANET-mg Subject: Fwd: Geneticist Sows Plot to Kill Lawn Mowers [ Part 1, Text/PLAIN (charset: ISO-8859-1 "Latin 1") 162 lines. ] [ Unable to print this part. ] [ The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set. ] [ Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] Howdy, all-- Thought this latest exercise in GM science fiction/fantasy might interest some of you. Note that one justification for pursuing this particular product is that you "would need less fertilizer" for your model suburban yard. Needs. Ya gotta love em. p m ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Geneticist Sows Plot to Kill Lawn Mowers David Lazarus, Chronicle Staff Writer Tuesday, December 21, 1999 Michael Neff was out mowing his lawn in Southern California when inspiration struck. It occurred to him that this tiresome chore, the bane of suburbanites everywhere, could be virtually eliminated by creating a genetically engineered ``dwarf grass'' that would grow much more slowly than ordinary grass. Now, more than a year later, Neff and other scientists have succeeded in isolating a gene that limits stem growth in plants. This ``dwarf gene'' may allow growers to restrict the height of grass, trees and other plants. The findings were detailed in a paper published in yesterday's edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ``This is incredibly exciting,'' Neff said in a telephone interview from St. Louis, where he is now an assistant professor of plant genetics at Washington University. ``It's a huge step forward.'' At the time of the research, Neff was working as a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego. ``You're not ever going to be able to create a plant that doesn't need pruning,'' he said. ``Plants need to grow to thrive. ``But if you have something that grows slower, you would have to spend less time maintaining it and use less fertilizer.'' Along with creating a dark green lawn that hardly ever needs to be mowed, Neff said the dwarf gene potentially could lead to pint-size fruit trees capable of maximizing output in limited areas or stronger, tighter timber for the building industry. The key word here is ``potentially.'' Although the gene in question could theoretically be introduced to various types of plants, Neff said, scientists have yet to see how it would affect grass or trees. ``We still have a lot of experiments to do,'' he said. ``But we are right on the edge of a tremendous amount of things that could happen.'' Neff declined to speculate on when such genetically engineered plants could be developed. But when pressed, he said a no-mow grass could be concocted in a year. Be that as it may, there are doubters, especially as far as new-and-improved grass is concerned. ``I would like to see the end product,'' said Ali Harivandi, an environmental horticulturist at a University of California plant research facility in Alameda. ``I have a suspicion this might not work.'' His chief concern is that a slow-growing grass would not accommodate the wear and tear of foot traffic. ``When it is damaged, it would not grow back,'' Harivandi said. ``When a lawn is damaged from playing football, for example, it will recover by growing back.'' He is also worried that dwarf grass would have an unusually shallow root system, making it more susceptible to injury. This is the case with strains of slow-growing grass that have been bred over the years by horticulturists. But Joanne Chory, the Salk Institute professor cited as ``senior author'' on the dwarf-gene paper (Neff is ``first author''), said the genetically altered plants may not be prone to such setbacks. ``It may be possible to make short or dwarf plants that are completely normal in every other way,'' she said. Salk researchers took a tobacco plant that would normally grow to six feet tall and engineered it to reach maturity at just 12 inches. A hardy, long-lasting grass that might normally grow to 12 inches could be limited in theory to mature at just a fraction of this amount -- a mere two inches, say. This would be bad news for professional gardeners. Some might find their workload significantly reduced as homeowners rush to plant low-maintenance lawns. ``If you're strictly a mow-and-blow type of person, this could cause problems,'' said Robert Scudder, who runs a San Francisco landscaping firm and serves on the board of the San Francisco Professional Gardeners Association. ``But I think that highly qualified gardeners would have a lot of other stuff to be involved in,'' Scudder said, noting that there are hedges to be pruned and trees to be trimmed. ``Mowing lawns isn't the only thing we do.'' Even so, what if the dwarf gene could be used to create hedges that do not need to be pruned, or trees that require no trimming? Scudder dismissed such speculation. First, he does not think such a brave new world of landscaping ever will emerge. Moreover, he said professional gardeners, like plants, will adapt to changing circumstances. ``There's always going to be a need for someone out there caring for plants,'' he said. ``Even with bioengineering, there's always going to be a need for a gardener.'' As for Neff, who played such an instrumental role in a development that could dramatically alter the lifestyles of homeowners the world over, might a Nobel Prize be in his future? It's way too early for such talk, Neff said. But, he added, ``I'm sure someone on the committee mows their own lawn.'' ©1999 San Francisco Chronicle Page A3