Question: have you encountered any challenges or limitations when working with agrobacterium in the laboratory

Ryan Weir answered on 27 Jun 2023:

Agrobacterium is often quite easy to work with. But sometimes we can encounter problems. One problem I have encountered is that when we as scientists add new DNA to agrobacterium sometimes the agrobacterium spits it back out!

It’s very hard to understand why, but in simple terms sometimes agrobacterium just doesn’t like the DNA we are trying to make it to carry into the plant! These kinds of issues can often be resolved by making some changes to the process in which we force agrobacterium to carry new DNA. This process is called electroporation and involves giving the agrobacterium an electric shock!