Australia approves release of a GM 'blue' rose.

See link: http://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/sentarticle/default.asp?ID=4361

There is a photo here:
http://www.florigene.com/news/news.php

Hi,
I don't know why they bothered. It doesn't look any more blue than Blue Moon or Charles de Gaulle or Lady X or Lagerfeld or Blueberry hill etc.. Much ado about nothing and the thin edge of the GE wedge.
Barbara B

Well... it's true there are comparable 'blues' out there already but this represents a sigificant step forward in the journey towards a really blue rose and is significant in that the rose has been released here in Australia. I have grave concerns that there hasn't been enough put into their risk management (the link in the article above) and feel that it has been rushed through to help recoup some costs without taking into consideration the possible implications of doing what they have (you need to read and understand the risk management submission at the above link to know what I mean) because part of the 'foreign DNA' comes from a bacterium that imparts antibitoic resistance to the rose... I feel this is not a very resposnsible thing to do for a number of reasons and I feel they are being a little too blasé about it... so I will be watching with some interest what happens from this point onwards...

When it is BLUE or Dark Blue I will be interested, as for the bacterium, this could be of concern. I guess we could ask why they stopped roses being sent straight here from overseas because someone was doing a PhD on came across SOD (sudden Oak death) and roses MIGHT carry it to our shores.

The two things are unrelated Dave. The bacteria's DNA was incorporated, not the bacteria itself. The bacteria's DNA was added because it gave the plant resistance to a particular antibiotic. This was used to demonstrate that the propagating material (from tissue culture) was actually taking up the modified DNA because other bacteria or viruses were used as vectors to insert the transgenic DNA... in effect it was a marker to flag the success of the process. The new plants or propagules were then exposed to various antibiotics and those that showed effects were weeded out because it was assumed they did not possess the transgenic DNA whilst the ones that were unaffected were demonstrating they did possess it. The fear is this... Agrobacterium are common in soils and they can be significant horticultural threats. If agrobacterium not possessing this antibiotic resistance were to infect this plant there is a chance these DNA portions might combine with the DNA of the native agrobacterium thus contributing to the evolution of agrobacteria that are resistant to a certain anitbiotic. This is very probable given that it was bacterial in origin to start off with.

I couldn't get the image of the blue rose to come up ?