working with rice in the lab

 After a wet winter, we're glad that the rainy season is over.  

On project GRFT, we are working with rice. 

Some varieties of rice have been used frequently in plant molecular biology because the are easier to transform.  Transformation is a cellular process where the host organism takes up a DNA plasmid. 

Then the host will express the proteins as desired.

In the project we're doing the chosen host organism is rice, Oryza Japonica, var. Nipponbare

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Here volunteer Lina prepares rice for plating out.

After husking, the rice gets multiple washings of  sterile distilled water, ethanol and a bleach solution.

We have been improving the process and now the rice when plated out is ready for particle bombardment in one week.