Chinese scientists create plant gene-editing tool ‘even school students and old farmers can master’
- While conventional methods of heritable gene editing in plants can take up to a year, innovation could reduce the process to about two weeks, say authors
- ‘Cut-dip-budding’ method skips some of the traditionally tedious steps of process, including tissue culture
“Even primary school students and old farmers can master gene editing,” says scientist Zhu Jian-Kang, who has helped develop a new approach that could greatly simplify the difficult and time-consuming process of editing genes in plants.
Zhu, a scientist at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen, was among researchers from southern China who helped develop the innovation.
Although gene editing is dependent on expertise, in his comment Zhu was pointing towards the technological leap his team had made in making the process far easier and more accessible.
Cao Xuesong, a scientist at SUSTech and a member of Zhu’s team described the current obstacles to gene editing: “Genetic modification or editing of plants has a very high technological barrier because it involves a lot of very specialised, precise operations and is inefficient – and currently only a very small fraction of plants are amenable to be genetically edited”.
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In a study published in the peer-reviewed journal The Innovation Life in December, Zhu, who is also editor-in-chief of the journal, and his colleagues reported an “extremely simplified method for genetic transformation and gene editing” that they said they hoped would significantly lower the threshold for gene editing and increase its efficiency.
While conventional methods of heritable gene editing in plants often take months, and in some cases up to a year, this innovative approach could reduce the process to about two weeks, according to Cao, who is also the first author of the study.
Since its discovery and debut over a decade ago, CRISPR/Cas has become a game-changing technology in the life sciences, and in 2020 its founders were awarded the Nobel Prize for enabling researchers to edit the DNA of animals, plants and microorganisms with extreme precision.
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The use of gene editing in plants has led to a number of revolutionary achievements, such as increasing crop yields and breeding seeds more resistant to disease and adaptable to adverse environments.
Despite its crucial role in agriculture and scientific research, there remain obstacles that limit its use, according to Cao. One long-standing difficulty is how to deliver the editors into cells to be modified more efficiently.
While likening gene editing to a pair of “scissors” that have evolved to be sharper and easier to use, he pointed out that an unresolved problem was “how to transport the scissors to where they need to be used”.
To successfully introduce exogenous gene-editing tools into plant cells, the conventional process requires tissue culture – “edited cells are usually exposed to various hormones and then induced to acquire specialised structures and functions before developing into whole plants capable of producing offspring – a process known to be tedious and inefficient.
Of the more than 370,000 species of higher plants in nature, less than 0.1 per cent can be genetically modified because there is no one-size-fits-all tissue culture method, and different plants grow in their own way.
After years of trying and searching, Zhu’s team has developed a new method called “CDB”, short for “cut-dip-budding”, which skips some of the tedious steps, including tissue culture.
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In the three CDB steps, a part of the plant that is more likely to regenerate, such as a leaf or root, is first cut to create a “wound” and then ‘dipped’ into a solution containing a bacterium called Agrobacterium to help deliver the gene editor enzyme into the plant cells. Finally, the edited or modified cells are regenerated.
In this study, the scientists applied the method to Taraxacum kok-saghyz (TKS) – a plant that has been widely studied for its excellent natural rubber production – proving the feasibility of the method.
But Cao said the team had tested the technology on more than 20 plant species, and “it has the potential to become a general-purpose approach”.
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Cao said the researchers’ first paper introducing the method was published in late 2022, drawing a lot of attention from peers and the publication of many follow-up papers.
However, he cautioned that further investigation in these early stages of the method’s development was needed. “How much potential it can bring to plant research and agricultural production for application needs to be further evaluated by peers.”
