A selection of news we missed during August. Reuters reports on the controversy surrounding horses edited by Kheiron Biotech to enhance their muscles. In Argentina, veterinary reproductive technologies are cutting-edge, and the use of cloning in horse breeding is accepted. Still, for now, genetically edited animals are not allowed to compete in polo.
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Nature Biotechnology devoted an editorial to the positive contribution CRISPR can make to the democratization of agricultural biotechnology. The hope is that, without the burden of overregulation, even public institutes and small biotech companies can bring useful products from the lab to the fields. Gene editing without the introduction of “trans” sequences from other species can be given the suffix “cis,” hence the title of the article, Cis-editing for all.
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Imtiyaz Khanday (left), Venkatesan Sundaresan (right) with their apomictic rice (credit: KARIN HIGGINS/UC DAVIS)
“To make a seed it takes a fruit,” pupils use to sing in Italy. Then students learn that there is an embryo inside seeds and it takes a pollen fertilized egg to make it. The dream of plant scientists, however, has always been to be able to produce seeds using only the cell egg. This dream has finally come true: a group led by Venkatesan Sundaresan, at UC Davis, has developed a rice variety capable of cloning its seed. Continue reading
CRISPeR FRENZY 