Reference no: EM1398101

You have done research into healthy food and have discovered that once upon a time many of our fruits and vegetables were originally purple. Over time mutants with different colours were found and due to their appealing colours people cultivated varieties with those different colours so that now what were originally the wildtype plants eg purple corn, purple carrots, purple potatoes are the unusual varieties. Research has shown that purple food plants tend to have more nutrients. Most of the ancient purple varieties don't use to have a single gene difference compared to our current varieties. Most have many genetic differences that result in their higher nutrient content. However to appeal to the impending craze for healthy purple vegetables and fruits you decide to try and create purple strawberries by adding a single gene that creates purple colour in grapes.
1.There is a lot of information available about strawberry genes. Before adding the purple gene from grapes into strawberries, explain how will you need to modify the gene and what will you need from strawberries to do this?
2.Briefly explain how you will get the purple gene into strawberry plants so that it can expressed and stably inherited.
3.Once consumers are growing these purple strawberry plants explain how this purple gene could be spread to unengineered strawberry plants.
4.Most strawberry plants are propagated vegetatively by special horizontal stems called runners that strawberry plants send out. Once these special long horizontal stems become covered with soil they will quickly form roots and entire new little plants. If everyone propagates strawberries using runners how could this lessen concerns about spreading the purple gene to unengineered plants?
5.What other concerns could arise regarding growing your purple strawberries?