Meyer-Rochow Victor Benno
Department of Ecology and Genetics, University of Oulu, SF-90140 Oulu, Finland.
Foods. 2022 Dec 12;11(24):4014. doi: 10.3390/foods11244014.
The world faces numerous problems and two of them are global food shortages and the dwindling number of pollinating insects. Plant products that do not arise from pollination are plant galls, which as in the case of oak apples, can resemble fruits and be the size of a cherry. It is suggested that once research has understood how chemical signals from gall-inducing insects program a plant to produce a gall, it should be possible to mimic and to improve nature and "bioengineer" designer galls of different sizes, colorations and specific contents to serve as food or a source of medicinally useful compounds. To achieve this objective, the genes involved in the formation of the galls need to be identified by RNA-sequencing and confirmed by gene expression analyses and gene slicing. Ultimately the relevant genes need to be transferred to naïve plants, possibly with the aid of plasmids or viruses as practiced in crop productivity increases. There is then even the prospect of engineered plant galls to be produced by plant tissue culture via genetic manipulation without the involvement of insects altogether.
世界面临着众多问题，其中两个问题是全球粮食短缺和传粉昆虫数量的减少。非授粉产生的植物产品是植物瘿，就像橡子果一样，它们可能类似果实，大小如樱桃。有人认为，一旦研究了解了诱导瘿形成的昆虫的化学信号如何促使植物产生瘿，就应该有可能模仿并改善自然，“生物工程”出不同大小、颜色和特定成分的设计瘿，用作食物或药用化合物的来源。为实现这一目标，需要通过RNA测序鉴定参与瘿形成的基因，并通过基因表达分析和基因切片加以证实。最终，可能需要借助质粒或病毒（如同提高作物产量时所采用的方法），将相关基因转移到未接触过的植物中。甚至还有可能通过基因操作，利用植物组织培养完全不借助昆虫来生产工程化植物瘿。
