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posted by CoolHand on Thursday March 07 2019, @01:44PM   Printer-friendly

Corn and other important crops can now be gene edited by pollen carrying CRISPR

The genome editor CRISPR has transformed many areas of biology, but using this tool to enhance certain varieties of crops such as wheat and corn remains difficult because of the plants' tough cell walls. Now, a major agricultural company has creatively solved that problem by using pollen from one genetically modified plant to carry CRISPR's components into another plant's cells. The solution promises to speed the creation of better and more versatile crops, scientists say.

In its initial experiments, the company has edited varieties of corn to have more or heavier kernels, which could make them higher yielding [DOI: 10.1038/s41587-019-0038-x] [DX]. "Nice!" says Daniel Voytas, a plant biologist at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul who helped invent a different genome editor and co-founded another company to exploit it. "It's exciting that an increasing number of research groups—both in academia and industry—are thinking of new ways to deliver gene-editing [components] and to efficiently recover gene-edited plants."


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  • (Score: 2) by TheFool on Thursday March 07 2019, @04:52PM

    by TheFool (7105) on Thursday March 07 2019, @04:52PM (#811198)

    Agreed, but tell that to Daniel Voytas. He seems to be really excited about the idea in the summary.

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