ICAR, Penn State team makes tool small enough to edit plant genomes Premium
The Hindu
Discover how a new, compact genome editing tool can revolutionize agriculture by enhancing crop traits with precision.
Flour, chocolate, cocoa powder, eggs, and butter are all the ingredients to make a sweet treat you crave.
The only thing you need right now is a step-by-step recipe to help you turn the ingredients into a yummy brownie.
Nature also has the ingredients it needs to ‘make’ living organisms, using a genetic instruction manual called the genome. A small change in the genome’s composition can determine whether the living thing being made is a flower that exhibits two petal colours, a cat that has big or small ears or if the coriander leaves will taste like soap to some people.
With the help of the gene-editing tool CRISPR, scientists today can precisely edit genomes to introduce desirable genetic traits or remove undesirable ones.
CRISPR holds the potential to revolutionise agriculture in particular by allowing agricultural scientists to increase crop yields and improve resistance to disease and anomalous weather through gene-editing. However, there has been a critical obstacle: a commonly used form of the CRISPR system is too big for plant genomes.
This system uses one of two proteins, Cas9 or Cas12, to target specific parts of the DNA. But they are too bulky for plant cells to accommodate.
A team of researchers led by Kutubuddin Molla from the ICAR-National Rice Research Institute in Cuttack and Mirza Baig from the Pennsylvania State University in the U.S. presented an alternative that could solve this major problem in plant genome editing in a recent paper in the journal Plant Biotechnology Journal.
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