Genotypes vs. phenotypes:
In October, Yinong Yang, a Penn State University scientist, received an unusual award for a plant pathologist.
Popular Science magazine honoured Yang with a “Best of What’s New” award for his invention of a mushroom that resists browning.
“The Best of What’s New awards honour innovations that shape the future,” said Kevin Gray, executive editor of Popular Science, in a Penn State news release. “From life-saving technology to incredible space engineering to gadgets that are just breathtakingly cool.”
Popular Science recognized Yang because the scientist used a gene editing technique, known as CRISPR-Cas9, to create a mushroom with a longer shelf life.
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CRISPR has been touted as the next big thing in plant science because it allows researchers to precisely delete or insert genes in a plant’s DNA without disturbing other portions of the genome.
Besides Popular Science, Yang’s mushroom also made news in 2016 because it became “the first CRISPR edited organism to get a green light from the U.S. government,” Reuters reported.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture told Yang that the anti-browning mushroom would not be subject to regulatory approval from the U.S. department of agriculture. That’s because the mushroom has small deletions in a specific gene, but no foreign DNA was introduced, Yang said.
Plant scientists and the crop science companies say CRISPR is exciting because it may not be regulated, which should speed the process of commercializing novel crop traits.
Dave Dzisiak, commercial leader for grains and oils with Dow Agro-Science in Canada, said in 2015 that all the major plant science companies have research programs focused on genome editing.
Yang is convinced the technology can be used for what he calls “precision breeding” of crops with traits like disease resistance, drought tolerance and nitrogen use efficiency.
“These agronomic traits not only help reduce pesticide, fertilizer and water usage, but also improve food quality and safety.”
A number of plant breeders would agree with Yang, but Isobel Parkin isn’t one of them.
Parkin, an Agriculture Canada research scientist in Saskatoon who specializes in canola genomics, said CRISPR is useful but it may not be revolutionary. Deleting a gene or two to stop a mushroom from browning is one thing, but agronomic traits like drought tolerance can be more complex.
“It’s always been the case that people have hoped for a magic bullet. You can identify one gene that potentially controls many others,” Parkin said. “And in that way you can manipulate a trait. But that has yet to show any real promise.”
Curtis Pozniak, a University of Saskatchewan professor and wheat breeding expert, said the genome of many crops is not an open book. It’s pointless to delete or insert a gene if you don’t understand the gene’s function.
“Most crops lack a fully annotated genome and we have no idea how the genes work in an orchestrated manner,” he said.
Parkin agreed. A gene editing tool like CRISPR may be highly precise and targeted, but plant science isn’t quite ready for the technology.
“What I’d like to see is it being used to change a trait that increases (crop) productivity or increases yield…. (But) we’re not at that stage yet,” she said. “Things like yield … we already know it’s controlled by multiple genes across the genome. So how would you target a single gene that’s going to impact yield?… I think we really have to get back to the genetics and understand what are the key factors that are going to help us increase yield.”
