Gene of the Month - Delila

Kat:: And finally it's time for our gene of the month, and this time we're venturing into the garden with a gene called Delila. Found in antirrhinum, or snapdragon, plants, Delila is responsible for the distribution of brightly-coloured chemicals called anthocyanins, which give the flower petals their brilliant hues. Molecularly speaking, the Delila gene contains the instructions that tell cells to make a transcription factor - a protein that switches other genes on or off. Snapdragon flowers are made up of a tube leading to open petals, and faults in the Delila gene create flowers with coloured petals but colourless white tubes - perhaps one of the prettier mutations we've covered on the Naked Genetics podcast for a while.