ABSTRACT
As described in Chapter 19, several techniques have been utilized successfully to introduce DNA into plant cells. Of these methods, particle bombardment, wherein microscopic metal particles coated with genetically engineered DNA are explosively accelerated into plant cells, has become the second most widely used vehicle for plant genetic transformation, after
Agrobacterium
-mediated transformation (Gray and Finer, 1993). Several distinct “particle guns” have been described, including the Biolistic PDS 1000/He (Kikkert, 1993), which is the only commercially available device. The most attractive of the noncommercial devices is the particle inflow gun (PIG) (Finer et al., 1992), based on a flowing helium device described by Takeuchi et al. (1992), which can be fabricated from steel plate with readily available parts and offers performance on par with the Biolistic PDS 1000/He (Brown et al., 1994).
