An innovative discovery in the field of genetic engineering was announced on Monday by Tel Aviv University (Tau): Israeli and Chinese scientists have developed a new gene editing technology that promises to revolutionize the large -scale modification of entire families of genes in plants. This new approach significantly improves the scope and efficiency of the Crispr methods currently in use.
Until now, The Crispr methodologies presented limitations in the number of genes that could be modified and addressed the problem of “genetic redundancy”that is, the ability of similar genes to compensate each other, hindering the effectiveness of the desired changes.
The researchers from Tau, the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Israeli company of Agri-Tech Netagenomix have collaborated to overcome these barriers. The team has designed an innovative algorithm capable of building “bookcases” CRISPR, tools that can simultaneously aim and modify thousands of related genes.
The team created an impressive number of 15,000 unique CRISPR units and used them to modify the genes in over 1,300 tomato plants. The goal was to monitor how genetic changes influenced specific traits of plants, such as sweetness, shape and resistance to diseases.
The results of this pioneering research, published in the prestigious magazine Nature Communicationshave shown considerable success. Some of the modified plants have produced fruits with significantly higher or lower sugar levels of normal, depending on the objectives of editing. The experiment also confirmed the ability of the new methodology to successfully alter the flavor, shape, size and resistance to tomato diseases.
The researchers said they were already working to apply this innovative method to other agricultural crops of fundamental importance, including rice. The expectation is that this new approach can contribute substantially to the development of variety of better and more resilient crops, capable of dealing with the challenges imposed by climate change and growing global food demand.
This scientific collaboration between China and Israel represents a crucial step forward for genetic engineering applied to agriculture, opening new ways to improve food production and agricultural sustainability on a world scale.