Here’s What a Gene Gun Is, and Does
It’s not science fiction, you can buy one, and it’s legal to carry
Long before I started working at a laboratory bench or on a computer writing programs for analyzing biology data, I avidly devoured most of the science fiction novels at my town’s library.
Somewhere, either in a scifi novel or in a scientific paper, I stumbled across the term “gene gun.” To my febrile teenage mind, this conjured up flashy mental images of a gun that could shoot syringes, each one filled with genetic material to take over any target it hit.
Go on, say it out loud. “Gene gun.” It sounds cool, in an edgy, Republican sort of way!
But what is a gene gun? What does it really do, how does it work, and do we need to start getting nervous that someone will bring one of them into a concert or onto an airplane?
Let’s learn what this tool is and how it works!
It’s Surprisingly Hard to Get Things Into Cells
Imagine that you’re a researcher, trying to make changes to your organism of interest. Let’s say you’re working on plants, and you want to create a plant that is resistant to a popular herbicide.
