Rob,
Are the weird code at the bottom of each page of the Nuleotide the DNA
arrangement?
"TQPL" ¼¶¼g©ó¶l¥ó·s»D
...
Hi Dicky,

Thanks for explaining your goals.
Rob is very optimistic and gives you some good
sound ideas.
Unfortunately I am not otpimistic for you.
As Rob said "the big problem is going to be the
Paph tc." Though even that is small...compared
to your aims.

I would go for bio-technology studies even though
GM has a bad press.
If you could in the future colour modify tobacco
( a comparative easy bio-engineering plant)
it might be a start.

Your work would have to be carried out in research
institutions and be licenced. You probably would
need to be part of a team or have a doctorate.

There are many more commercial orchids than Paphs
that might give more lucrative results.

However if you look around at horticulture,
changing flower colour has not been achieved
with any great success todate.
Many would consider there are easier plants
around to study than orchids for such goals.

The red rose turned into the blue of delphinium is
simply not with us in 2004.
There are multimillion pound projects searching
for solutions but they are not arriving
with results.

Then you have the problem....will the public
accept such plants. If not - they are
commercially dead. You cannot simply 'release'
modified plants.

Some people, including companies and institutions
would argue that there are more lucrative and
humanitarian avenues to follow,
such as medical drug production in plant crops.

Achieving albums, albas and other variants from
seedlings on flowering may be a much easier to
achieve goal for you in Paphiopedilums.

Good luck.
If you can achieve it you will become a
billionaire.

With regards
Alan.










"Rob Halgren" wrote in
message ...



4. The major barrier to doing this with
paphiopedilum is that it is
very difficult to grow these cells in tissue
culture. Otherwise we
would be able to 'clone' paphs, which just
doesn't happen very easily.
Hence, paphs aren't the best system to learn how
to do genetic
modifications in. I'd stick with phals or
cymbidiums, at least to learn
the techniques.


Don't let any of that stop you from dreaming
about doing it. It isn't
easy, and it isn't cheap. But it is
interesting. You could make a very
good scientific career out of answering the
kinds of questions you ask.

Rob

--
Rob's Rules:
http://www.msu.edu/~halgren

1) There is always room for one more orchid
2) There is always room for two more orchids
2a. See rule 1
3) When one has insufficient credit to
purchase
more orchids, obtain more credit