Researchers at Tel Aviv University have developed a new gene editing method for crop plants, focusing on tomatoes. The approach can change key traits like fruit taste and shape. It could be used on many crop species to create better plant varieties.
Prof. Eilon Shani, Prof. Itay Mayrose, and PhD student Amichai Berman led the study.
They worked with researchers from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and Dr. Osnat Yanai from the Israeli company NetaGenomiX. The findings were published in Nature Communications.
“Researchers around the world are engaged in advancing agriculture to address accelerated global changes and feed the global population in the coming decades,” Shani said. Genetic editing technologies like CRISPR-Cas9 are being used to develop plants with traits like drought resistance, better flavor, and optimized nutrient usage. But using CRISPR in agriculture has been hard.
It’s limited in how many genes it can edit and study at once.
tomato gene editing advancement
Plants also have genetic redundancy, where similar genes make up for each other.
This study improves CRISPR efficiency to look at thousands of genes and understand their functions better. Berman said they had to change whole families of similar genes at the same time. “In a previous study, we developed a breakthrough solution using a dedicated algorithm.
We fed it a list of thousands of genes we wanted to edit. The algorithm identified a suitable CRISPR unit for each gene (or gene group), thereby constructing CRISPR libraries.”
For this study, the team made 10 CRISPR libraries with about 15,000 unique units. Each unit targeted specific gene families in the tomato genome.
They used the units to edit around 1,300 tomato plants, changing a different gene group in each one. The researchers watched the plants to see how the edits changed traits like fruit size, shape, taste, nutrient use, and disease resistance. Some plant lines were sweeter or less sweet than the control group.
This research is an important step in using CRISPR technology to improve agriculture and crops. It could help address global food security challenges. NetaGenomiX has a license to sell the new technology.
The goal is to develop non-GMO crops that can handle climate change.
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