Cathie's desk
Controlled enviroment rooms
Dr Wendy Harwood
Tree with Crown Gall disease
GM barley growing under controlled conditions
Barley plants grown to provide immature embryos
Barley embryo
Isolation of immature embryos
Dr Cathie Martin
Purple pigments in regular tomato plant
Enzymes used to cut DNA
Samples prepared for separation
Transformation experiment in progress
GM tomato plant
GM tomatoes starting to ripen
GM tomatoes
Sunblack tomato (non-GM)
GM tomato
Freeze-dried powder of GM tomatoes (right) non-GM tomatoes (left)
Digestion of DNA
Dr Simon Foster
GM potato #1
GM potato #2
Planting GM potato
GM potato trial planting
Potato berries
GM potato trial 1st July 2011
Non-GM potato (yellow tag) GM potato plant (red tag)
Newspapers
Exhibition 1
Exhibition 2
Exhibition 3
Exhibition 4
This project was commissioned for the British Science Festival and was exhibited at Impressions Gallery, Bradford in September 2011.
The production of genetically-modified foods remains a mystery to many. From March to August 2011 Murray Ballard and Elliot Hammer made several visits to the John Innes Centre - Europe's largest independent research facility for the study of plant science and microbiology - with the aim of gaining a deeper understanding of genetic modification technology and its applications in the development of crop plants.
This newspaper/exhibition is divided into three sections, each dealing with a different experiment. The first looks at the development of drought resistant barley and the initial stages of the genetic modification process. The second section goes on to look at the development of tomatoes with increased levels of nutrition. This section delves into more detail and explains how a particular piece of DNA is selected and transferred. It also looks at the testing processes and the comparison between genetically and non-genetically modified tomatoes. The final section follows the field trials of blight resistant potatoes. This part of the experiment takes place after the genetic modification has been carried out and is designed to test the effectiveness of the new potato crop.

