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The study reported findings that would enable scientists to edit genes on a larger scale and gain access to a broader range of traits.
By Shula Rosen
Scientists from Tel Aviv University’s School of Plant Sciences and Food Security have refined the gene-editing method for crops, developing a new approach to enhance the appearance and taste of tomatoes.
The method is likely to have applications for other types of crops.
The study, published in Nature Communications, described findings that would enable scientists to edit genes on a larger scale and gain access to a greater variety of traits.
“Researchers around the world are engaged in advancing agriculture to address accelerated global changes and feed the global population in the coming decades,” said Eilon Shani, PhD, professor in the School of Plant Sciences and Food Security at Tel Aviv University and corresponding author of the study.
“Using our innovative method, we successfully made targeted genetic changes to gene families in the tomato plant and identified precisely which genetic edits produced the desired result,” he continued.
The research was spearheaded by Prof. Eilon Shani and Ph.D. student Amichai Berman, in partnership with Prof. Itai Miroz and a team from the School of Plant Sciences and Food Security. Dr. Osnat Yanai of the Israeli agri-tech firm NetaGenomiX also contributed, alongside scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.
Prior to the study, the crop gene editing system, the CRISPR-Cas9 system, was limited to editing one gene at a time; the study has now enabled the system to access and edit thousands of genes.
The researchers also discovered a solution to the problem of “genetic redundancy”: when genes from the same family have similar amino acid sequences, canceling out the editing of individual genes, as the majority seem to retain the original composition.
“To overcome genetic redundancy, we aimed to edit entire families of similar genes simultaneously,” Berman told Ynet. “We developed a dedicated algorithm and fed it a list of thousands of genes we wanted to target. The algorithm identified a CRISPR unit for each gene—or gene group—that would create the desired change, effectively building a CRISPR library.”
The team created 10 CRISPR libraries, each containing approximately 15,000 distinct CRISPR units, specifically designed to target unique gene families within the tomato genome. These units were then used to genetically alter around 1,300 tomato plants, with each plant carrying edits to a different gene family.
They then tested the technology on actual tomato plants and observed that the genetic editing was successful for the traits of fruit size, shape, taste, nutrient use, and pest resistance.
In this study, using our innovative method, we successfully introduced desirable genetic changes in tomato gene families and pinpointed which specific edits produced the desired results,” said Prof. Shani.
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