putterings 410 < 411 > 412 index
but not in the way you may think
Puttering with Transgenic Plants
from a three-snippet preview of Tara Rodden Robinson, Genetics for Dummies (2005)
(probably from a search involving author:Robinson + “puttering”) : link
another, from a later search, within same volume —
Something close to the same text (for this passage) — but not the word “puttering” — appears in the third edition, Tara Rodden Robinson and Lisa Cushman Spock, Genetics for Dummies (2020), which is inexplicably (and without doubt inappropriately) available via archive.org : 318 : link
Here is that passage, minus the OCR confusions —
Plants are really different from animals, but not in the way you may think. Plant cells are totipotent, meaning that practically any plant cell can eventually give rise to every sort of plant tissue: roots, leaves, and seeds. When animal cells differentiate during embryo development, they lose their totipotency forever (but the DNA in every cell retains the potential to be totipotent). For genetic engineers, the totipotency of plant cells reveals vast possibilities for genetic manipulation.
Much of the transgenic revolution in plants has focused on moving genes from one plant to another, from bacteria to plants, or even from animals to plants...
aside —
Maybe jettisoning the “puttering” was jettisoned to lose some of the informality in what is, IMHO, a good book.