BIOTECHNOLOGY Blue rose is 'holy grail'

The search for a blue rose has reached mythical proportions for some.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Roses are red, and a variety of other colors. But they've never been blue -- an omission legions of rose breeders have sought for centuries to remedy.
"It would be a beautiful thing to see," said James Armstrong, an award-winning flower show exhibitor and consultant with the San Francisco Rose Society.
Breakthroughs in biotechnology may finally resolve the quest for the elusive blue rose, which, alas, does not exist because roses lack the corresponding pigment genes.
Technology also promises to restore sweet smells to the rose and other flowers. Generations of commercial breeding has led to beautiful but bland-smelling roses. Their colors are stunning and vase lives long, but they've little fragrance.
Genetic engineers are also busy bringing science to bear on diseases and pests that affect the world's 120 rose species, which have blossomed into a $10 billion-a-year business worldwide.
Still, it's the blue rose that remains the biggest prize.
Accidental discovery
At Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, scientists studying how drugs metabolize in the liver stumbled across a human protein that may hold the key to creating the world's first-known blue rose.
Elizabeth Gillam, working in the lab of biochemist F. Peter Guengerich, amazed her boss one day with a flask full of bacteria that she turned blue with an enzyme taken from a patient's liver. They're now trying to insert into roses the human gene that produces that blue enzyme.
"I would have called you crazy five years ago if you told me I would be pursuing a blue rose," said Guengerich, who spends most of his time researching disease-fighting drugs. "It's not something we set out to do."
Guengerich marvels that so many gardening enthusiasts lust after the blue rose, the pursuit of which has reached near-mythical proportions.
"For some reason this is the holy grail for this type of work," Guengerich said. "We could try to create blue cotton, blue anything really."
Stem spots
So far, though, they've only managed to get a few blue spots into the stems. "It's not as easy you may think," Guengerich said. "It's going to take more work."
Guengerich and Gillam are nonetheless talking to biotechnology companies about helping them develop a blue rose.
They're not alone -- Florigene, an Australian company, was launched in 1986 to develop a blue rose. Its scientists have tried to splice a "blue" petunia gene into roses, with little success so far.
Other biotechnology projects that may soon be under way include the creation of thornless roses. Robert Skirvin, a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, hopes his work with thornless blackberry bushes can be used to de-thorn the stems of roses -- some of which are found in nature.