Chinese scientists find natural selection loophole that could help transform food security

Gene editing tool to modify wild plant populations can balance crop protection with environmental concerns, researchers say

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Chinese researchers say a new CRISPR-based gene editing system has opened new possibilities in plant engineering and disease treatment. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 8:00pm, 23 Jun 2024

Scientists in China have found a way to bypass natural plant gene inheritance, by using a CRISPR-based gene editing system to boost the transmission of preferred genes even when they are detrimental to a plant.

By harnessing a system that uses both a toxin and an antidote to target the male plant germline, the scientists were able to overcome the natural Mendelian transmission rate, achieving gene transmission rates of up to 99 per cent over two generations.

“Facing diverse challenges such as threats to food security from agricultural weeds and the environmental crisis of invasive plants, the genetic manipulation of wild plant populations has emerged as a potentially powerful and transformative strategy,” the team wrote in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Plants on Monday.

Efforts to breed for ideal genes that can be detrimental to their plants have been limited by the classical principles of Mendelian inheritance and Darwinian natural selection, the team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Peking University said in their paper.

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Mendelian inheritance is a principle that describes how genetic traits are passed from one generation to another, and states that the two alleles contained within a single gene each have a 50 per cent chance of passing on to offspring through reproduction.