Page 18 - Breeding Edge ebook

genetic defects, etc. Thus, scientists hope to use them to benefit human health, first of all, but also to edit
the genes of animals, plants, bacteria, fungi, and other organisms. They want to improve livestock
breeds and crop varieties, but also eliminate diseases, wipe out pathogens, rein in harmful insects, and
more.

Significantly, unlike other traditional gene-editing methods, employing CRISPR or TALEN is
cheap, quick and relatively easy for breeders to use. That leads Doudna to call the new gene
editing processes “a democratizing tool,” because breeders in poor countries and in less-endowed
labs worldwide – not just those in more lushly-funded corporate and university labs – will have
broad access to gene editing.

What’s more, in October, DuPont Pioneer, a leading global crop genetics company, and the Broad
Institute of MIT and Harvard, which holds the initial CRISPR patent, granted agricultural researchers at
all university and other nonprofit entities free access to use the CRISPR-Cas9 patent.

With such access and potential for quick results, not surprisingly, CRISPR has swept through labs
around the world. Slutsky says she travels a lot internationally to work on matters involving crop
genetics, “and I probably spend 50 percent of my time in countries who are talking about (using
CRISPR) … in South America, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Europe – countries that we
would not necessarily consider biotech friendly, who ban GMO plantings. (But) they don’t want
these technologies to pass them by.”

The University of California-affiliated Innovative Genomics Institute has been collecting reports of
successful genetic editing by scientists worldwide. Megan Hochstrasser, IGI science communications
manager, is curator for the list and she says, “the tally is over 200 right now and only includes those
organisms edited using CRISPR enzymes,” rather than other gene editing processes.

IGI’s list includes “all organisms … vertebrates, invertebrates, plants, and microbes,” Hochstrasser
reports, and “it seems that the microbes section is growing the most rapidly. Some of the microbes are
pathogenic,” and she thinks that “makes sense, since scientists need to understand how pathogens
function in order to combat them.”

Efforts to employ CRISPR to fight pathogens have perhaps most often been aimed at microbes that harm
people: one that causes malaria, for example, and a parasite that causes Chagas disease. But researchers
are also using CRISPR to build in defenses against rice blast fungus, corn smut, and the cotton
bollworm, Hochstrasser noted.

Note, too, that the new processes aren’t likely to be the world’s last best answer in breeding techniques.
A steam-powered car called the Stanley Rocket, for example, broke the world land speed record at 127.7
miles per hour more than a century ago (1906). Sure, that was jaw-dropping at the time, and even kind
of impressive now. But, as with race cars, improvements will continue in gene-editing technique as well.

Here is one of perhaps many on the way. CRISPR actually often over performs in the cell nucleus,
making an excessive number of cuts, including some in the wrong places, scientists report. But now,
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have found a way to improve CRISPR-Cas9 technology,
making genetic revisions much more likely to be exactly as desired. Their new method uses a molecular
glue, keeping the Cas9 enzyme and RNA strand together as a complete repair kit at the DNA cut.

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