University of Helsinki
Yearly, drought affects people from individual consumers to whole industries. Personally, I have had to cut some products out of my diet since the prices have been unreasonable. But seriously, the ones suffering most are the people in less privileged situations who are driven to hunt for basic products, such as rice, and may face malnutrition.
As the globe warms and population sizes reach new records food products are needed more than ever and no one can afford losing any crops to drought. This may sound scary but don’t worry scientists take this as a challenge and opportunity to do the unimaginable (in the hopes of winning a noble prize at the end 😉 ). Solving this global issue has turned the scientific community to its creative limit trying to find innovative solutions that are not only effective but sustainable in the long term and minimally invasive. Surely a creative and head-turning solution that has caught many eyes is the use of gene editing with the CRISPR-Cas9 method to breed drought-resistant crops. In this post, I will focus on many households’ beloved staple, rice.
What is CRISPR-Cas9?
Gene editing may sound like a plot from a sci-fi movie or a futuristic novel but it is far from that. The discovery of a gene editing technique called CRISPR-Cas9, which was found occurring within microorganisms, has changed the game for scientists. This technique allows scientists to edit a gene at a specific location, or locus, with higher accuracy and lower cost. Now scientists are taking advantage of this and improving agricultural traits, enhancing stress tolerance, and promoting desired characteristics of crops.
How can we use CRISPR-Cas9 to fight drought?
This particular study I looked at gives a great example of how CRISPR technology can be utilized to get closer to developing drought-tolerant rice varieties.
The researchers focused on one specific gene in rice called OsSAP. They compared the effects of drought stress on the growth of regular unmanipulated rice and rice that was edited using CRISPR-Cas9 at the location of this particular gene. And as you guessed it, they observed differences in growth. They found that OsSAP was what they call a “negative regulator” meaning that it suppresses the expression of other genes or proteins. OsSAP-gene was found when subjected to drought stress to induce cellular senescence, a state of permanent growth arrest of the plant, and apoptosis, programmed cell death. This means that if we overexpress this gene these processes will be induced even further thus improving the drought tolerance of rice. And that is exactly what the researchers did. This discovery suggested that this particular gene OsSAP is a potential candidate for creating a drought tolerant rice. This discovery is an example how CRISPR is utilized in the fight against drought and enables a closer step towards addressing food shortages.
What’s next?
This opens the question of whether are there more genes we can edit to further enhance the desired characters. The answer is yes. Evolution has been kind enough to produce plants that are highly sophisticated in dealing with drought. By looking at these plants and tracing their characteristics to their specific gene or genes researchers can potentially use them as a guide in enhancing drought tolerance of other plants. However, this may be potentially a challenging process but research such as the one looked at in this post is allowing us to get closer to permanent solutions and significant discoveries.
Fella Mekki
Reference
Park, J.-R., Kim, E.-G., Jang, Y.-H., Jan, R., Farooq, M., Ubaidillah, M., & Kim, K.-M. (2022). Applications of CRISPR/Cas9 as new strategies for short breeding to drought gene in Rice. Frontiers in Plant Science, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2022.850441