Some plants are droopy, as though the farmer forgot to add water.
Others have been chopped off near the ground and resemble parched asparagus. Not to worry, say the Virginia Tech researchers running the state-sponsored project in genetically altered tobacco. Our job is to try to develop field techniques for producing the protein. Flash back to 1992, when Dr. Carole Cramer, a plant physiologist at Tech, branched out in her studies of the inner workings of plant cells and how they fend off disease. First she learned how to transfer genes, those microscopic units of protein and DNA, from tomatoes into tobacco.