Herbicides and applications in plant biology.

Herbicides are pesticides used in plant biology applications to kill unwanted plant growth. Some herbicides are selective which allows growth of a desired plant but kills unwanted plants. Herbicides can also function as selectable markers in Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of plants. In this application, a herbicide resistance gene along with a gene of interest would integrate into the transformed plant's genome. A successfully transformed plant could then be grown in the presence of the herbicide to confirm that the plant expresses the gene of interest.