Tag: Gene Editing

This is an interesting and engaging review article, written by a team from Bayer US Crop Science, on how mutations (broadly defined) have benefited plant domestication and breeding. While it briefly covers the basics, such as population genetics, it really focuses on demystifying and normalizing the…

Domesticated plants and animals are remarkable human achievements but were achieved with rather blunt instruments. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see that some of the genes and alleles that passed through the population bottlenecks and artificial selection process are deleterious. Glaus et…

The introduction of CRISPR-Cas technology in 2012 marked a significant advancement in global genome editing, yet its potential remains largely untapped in Africa, where it could address crucial challenges in agriculture, public health, and medicine. However, several obstacles hinder its full realization,…

A year ago, graduate student Merritt Khaipho-Burch Tweeted a reaction to an article about a gene described as enhancing yield, which led to lively on-line and in-the-lunchroom discussions about how to realistically measure yield, and, maybe more importantly, where to draw the line between potential and…

I’ll be honest, I was surprised to see “a decade after implementation” in this title, but indeed, the first publication describing CRISPR/Cas in plants was in 2013. We’ve learned a lot in the past 10 years and the technology provides many opportunities, but challenges remain, both of which are…

Regulatory components called upstream open reading frames (uORFs) are commonly found in eukaryotic mRNA molecules. These uORFs regulate the translation rate of downstream coding sequences. Xue et al. edited uORFs added or edited uORFs in several genes to investigate the effects of adding or extending…

The chloroplast has its own genome which encodes proteins needed for chloroplast function. Editing these genes via CRISPR-Cas9 is difficult due to challenges in targeting guide RNAs to the chloroplast. Instead, base editors can be used, but these were originally developed for cytosine to thymine edits…

Lignin is one of the most important end-products of the cinnamate/monolignol pathway and it is abundant in the secondary cell wall of vascular plants. In grasses, lignins are derived from monolignols, p-hydroxycinnamates, and a flavonoid tricin. In the proposed cinnamate/monolignol pathway, 4-COUMARATE:COENZYME…