Ciba-Geigy, Monsanto other research news

Company and university collaborators have identified a single amino acid change that causes the lack of ripening in a tomato mutant.

As reported in Science, the Never-ripe (Nr) gene codes for a protein similar to the ethylene receptor in the plant Arabidopsis, but lacks the response regulator domain. A single change in an amino acid renders the plant insensitive to ethylene, the ripening agent, when expressed in transgenic plants. ...