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Researchers at UC Berkeley and UCSF’s Innovative Genomics Institute, or IGI, have found the diversity of CRISPR gene editors in viruses goes far beyond what they expected, possibly leading to new ways of editing genomes. ....
Coming from a long line of Iowa farmers, David Savage always thought he would do research to improve crops. That dream died in college, when it became clear that any genetic tweak to a crop would take at least a year to test; for some perennials and trees, it could take five to 10 years. Faced with such slow progress, he chose to study the proteins in photosynthetic bacteria instead. But the advent of CRISPR changed all that. Savage is now pivoting to molecular crop breeding, hoping to find ways to improve their carbon uptake and the amount of carbon they return to the soil. And he hopes to see these improved crops in fields within his lifetime, helping to boost crop yields but also to draw down the excess carbon in the atmosphere that is warming the planet and stash it underground.“ The advent of CRISPR basically allowed us to create new molecular tools for potentially skipping the slow aspects of plant tissue culture and plant genetic engineering, which are large barriers to doing ....
While humans continue to confront the COVID-19 pandemic, campus scientists have discovered a way for plants to fight off agricultural pandemics, according to a recently published study. Printed Friday in Science Magazine, the study outlines how a team of researchers discovered the functionalities and structural components of a plant immune receptor called the ROQ1 resistosome, which can recognize and effectively attack invasive pathogens. According to a press release by campus Innovative Genomics Institute, these findings will play an important role in prohibiting disease spread across many plant species and crops. “Surprisingly, the mechanism of binding to the pathogen is similar to how antibodies, which plants lack, recognize an antigen,” said Raoul Martin, a UC Berkeley biophysics graduate student who worked on the study, in an email. ....