Tag Archives: CRISPR

Monsanto brings gene-editing to strawberries

Multinational agribusiness Monsanto has invested $125 million in agricultural start-up Pairwise to leverage gene editing technology into fresh produce crops such as strawberries.

According to Business Insider, the two companies will use CRISPR gene editing techniques to develop fruit crops – most likely to be strawberries – within the next five to 10 years, with the benefits expected to be sweeter fruit with a longer shelf life. The website also reported that former Monsanto’s vice president of global biotechnology Tom Adams will become the new CEO of Pairwise.

“Gene editing allows you to address problems that you can’t address with genetic modification and do so faster,” Adams said, adding, “what’s exciting is that it can get into crops that have a smaller footprint than maybe corn and have more opportunities to get into the hands of consumers.”

Haven Baker, the founder and CEO of Pairwise plants, told Business Insider, “We are absolutely targeting things that you’ll be able to see in the produce aisle. And ideally it’ll be benefits you recognize as an average consumer shopping and looking for produce. We want to make specialty crops cheaper more accessible and more affordable.”

Photo Credit: Pixabay

The post Monsanto brings gene-editing to strawberries appeared first on Hort News on 5 April 2018.

CRISPR technology used to change flower colour

Japanese scientists have used the revolutionary CRISPR, or CRISPR/Cas9, genome-editing tool to change flower colour in an ornamental plant, the first time the technique has been used for such a purpose.

Researchers from the University of Tsukuba, the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO) and Yokohama City University, Japan, altered the flower colour of Japanese morning glory (Ipomoea nil or Pharbitis nil), from violet to white, by disrupting a single gene. Japanese morning glory, or Asagao, was chosen as it is one of two traditional horticultural model plants in the National BioResource Project in Japan (NBRP).

The research team targeted a single gene, dihydroflavonol-4-reductase-B (DFR-B), encoding an anthocyanin biosynthesis enzyme, that is responsible for the colour of the plant’s stems, leaves and flowers. Two other, very closely related genes (DFR-A and DRF-C) sit side-by-side, next to DFR-B.

The CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats)/Cas9 system is based on a bacterial defence mechanism. It is composed of two molecules that alter the DNA sequence. Cas9, an enzyme, cuts the two strands of DNA in a precise location so that DNA can be added or removed. Cas9 is guided to the correct location by a small piece of RNA that has been designed to be complementary to the target DNA sequence. Currently, CRISPR/Cas9 technology is not 100% efficient, but the mutation rate in this study, 75%, however, was relatively high.

Photo Caption: Morning glory flowers

Photo Credit: tamayura39 / Fotolia

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