Plant-animal petunia blossoms into art

MINNEAPOLIS — The ever-accelerating March of Science has brought us cloned sheep, cows and most recently a camel. Are we ready now for a "plantimal"? That is, a creature combining genetic material from a plant and an animal? Specifically a petunia infused with human DNA?

Ready or not, a Chicago artist and a University of Minnesota biologist have concocted just such a petunia, called "Edunia," after artist Eduardo Kac, whose DNA runs through its veins. The pink-ruffled flower is the shy star of an exhibit that opened last week at the University's Weisman Art Museum.

With lush green foliage and cascades of pretty flowers, Edunia looks like any ordinary petunia. The blossoms' delicate red veins are the result of DNA manipulation that integrates a protein-coding sequence from a chromosome in Kac's blood.

The project had to be approved by the university's biological-safety committee.

Kac's collaborator, molecular biologist Neil Olszewski, said the idea initially caused a stir among some faculty, who worried that the project could be a "lightning rod for protesters." Others feared that applying DNA research in art might lead to ridicule.

"Some people are just opposed to what they call 'man playing god,' taking DNA from humans and putting it into a plant," Olszewski said. "They say it's unnatural and shouldn't happen."

The biologist disagreed, saying that such arguments do not give nature "due credit" for situations in which "DNA does in fact move across species boundaries," such as the nasty tumors that bacteria commonly cause in roses.

A professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Kac, 46, is internationally known for his work in technology and bio-art. His most famous creation was Alba, a genetically modified white rabbit whose fur glowed green because of an infusion of fluorescent jellyfish genes.

For Kac (pronounced "cats"), the similarity between the vascular systems of plants and animals is a potent metaphor.

People generally accept their fundamental similarity to animals, but "the thought that we are also close to other life forms, including flora, will strike most as surprising," he writes on his Web site, www.ekac.org.

Or, as he put it last week at the Weisman, "I'm hoping people will realize this is no plastic flower we're talking about; it's a living being just like me."

Kac's photos, drawings and installations are in the collections of New York's Museum of Modern Art, Chicago's Holography Museum and the Modern Art Museum of Rio de Janeiro, his hometown.

Like all research involving the creation of transgenic organisms, Edunia had to be approved by the university's biological-safety committee and conform to guidelines issued by the National Institutes of Health. That means, among other things, that no leaves, seeds or blossoms escape into the natural environment. Ultimately, Edunia will be destroyed, though some of its seeds will become part of Weisman's permanent collection.

"There is really nothing to be concerned about with this plant," Olszewski said. "Even if it got out, it wouldn't do anything in the environment and does not represent any kind of risk. ...