Biochemist Clint Chapple withdraws a specimen of Arabidopsis from a growth chamber in a laboratory at Purdue University. Chapple has cloned a gene from the plant that will make it easier for crop plants to produce precursors for plastics. Plastics are produced by making chains of compounds derived from petroleum. Scientists call these chains polymers, and the individual molecules that form the chain are called monomers. One reason scientists are interested in making plastics from plants is that plants produce an amazing array of compounds that could be used for monomers in plastics.
Plants also are much more versatile than petroleum.
We can exploit that ability by using genomics to identify the genes required to make those compounds and by using biotechnology to insert the genes into crop plants. Until now, however, the problem has been trying to get plants to make enough of these substances for the whole process to be economically viable, he says. Although crude oil supplies are finite, petroleum has been a much less expensive source for plastic monomers. Fortunately, plants already have methods for making and storing large amounts of compounds that help protect them from insects, disease and ultraviolet radiation in sunlight. The vacuoles isolate the compound from the rest of the biochemical processes going on in the plant.