Roses are red, but science could someday turn them blue. Thats one of the possible future applications of a technique researchers have used to genetically engineer blue chrysanthemums for the first time.

Chyrsanthemums come in an array of colours, including pink, yellow and red. But all it took to engineer the truly blue hueand not a violet or bluish colourwas tinkering with two genes, scientists report in a study published on July 26 inScience Advances. The team says that the approach could be applied to other commercially important flowers, including carnations and lilies.

Consumers love novelty, says Nick Albert, a plant biologist at the New Zealand Institute for Plant & Food Research in Palmerston North, New Zealand. And people actively seek out plants with blue flowers to fill their gardens.

Plenty of flowers are bluish, but its rare to find true blue in nature, says Naonobu Noda, a plant researcher at the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization near Tsukuba, Japan, and lead study author. Scientists, including Noda, have tried to artificially produce blue blooms for years:efforts that have often produced violet or bluish huesin flowers such as roses and carnations. Part of the problem is that naturally blue blossoming plants arent closely related enough to commercially important flowers for traditional methodsincluding selective breedingto work.

Most truly blue blossoms overexpress genes that trigger the production of pigments called delphinidin-based anthocyanins. The trick to getting blue flowers in species that arent naturally that colour is inserting the right combination of genes into their genomes. Noda came close in a 2013 studywhen he and his colleagues found that adding a gene from a naturally blue Canterbury bells flower (Campanula medium) into the DNA of chrysanthemums (Chrysanthemum morifolium) produced a violet-hued bloom.

Noda says he and his team expected that they would need to manipulate many more genes to get the blue chrysanthemum they produced in their latest study. But to their surprise, adding only one more borrowed gene from the naturally blue butterfly pea plant (Clitoria ternatea) was enough.

Anthocyanins can turn petals red, violet or blue, depending on the pigments structure. Noda and his colleagues found that genes from the Canterbury bells and butterfly pea altered the molecular structure of the anthocyanin in the chrysanthemum. When the modified pigments interacted with compounds called flavone glucosides, the resulting chrysanthemum flowers were blue. The team tested the wavelengths given off by their blossoms in several ways to ensure that the flowers were truly blue.

The quest for blue blooms wouldn't only be applicable to the commercial flower market. Studying how these pigments work could also lead to the sustainable manufacture of artificial pigments, says Silvia Vignolini, a physicist at the University of Cambridge, UK, who has studied themolecular structure of the intensely blue marble berry.

Regardless, producing truly blue flowers is a great achievement and demonstrates that the underlying chemistry required to achieve 'blue' is complex and remains to be fully understood, says Albert.

This article is reproduced with permission and wasfirst publishedon July 26, 2017.

Read the original:
True Blue Chrysanthemum Flowers Produced with Genetic Engineering - Scientific American

Some of the most powerful technologies ever invented whichcan literally change human life at the DNAlevel aremoving forward with very little societal discussion or sufficient regulatory oversight. Technology Review is now reporting an attempt in the US to use CRISPR to genetically modify a human embryo. From the story:

The first known attempt at creating genetically modified human embryos in the United States has been carried out by a team of researchers in Portland, Oregon,Technology Reviewhas learned.

The effort, led by Shoukhrat Mitalipov of Oregon Health and Science University, involved changing the DNA of a large number of one-cell embryos with the gene-editing technique CRISPR, according to people familiar with the scientific results

Now Mitalipov is believed to have broken new ground both in the number of embryos experimented upon and by demonstrating that it is possible to safely and efficiently correct defective genes that cause inherited diseases.

Although none of the embryos were allowed to develop for more than a few daysand there was never any intention of implanting them into a wombthe experiments are a milestone on what may prove to be an inevitable journey toward the birth of the first genetically modified humans.

It may begin with curing disease. But it wont stay there. Many are drooling to engage in eugenic genetic enhancements.

So, are we going to just watch, slack-jawed, the double-time marchto Brave New World unfoldbefore our eyes?

Or are we going to engage democratic deliberation to determine if this should be done, and if so, what the parameters are?

Considering recent history, I fear I know the answer.

And NO: I dont trust the scientists to regulate themselves.

Mr. President: We need a presidential bioethics/biotechnology commission now!

Originally posted here:
Human Genetic Engineering Begins! - National Review

Naonobu Noda/NARO

Giving chrysanthemums the blues was easier than researchers thought it would be.

Roses are red, but science could someday turn them blue. Thats one of the possible future applications of a technique researchers have used to genetically engineer blue chrysanthemums for the first time.

Chyrsanthemums come in an array of colours, including pink, yellow and red. But all it took to engineer the truly blue hue and not a violet or bluish colour was tinkering with two genes, scientists report in a study published on 26 July in Science Advances1. The team says that the approach could be applied to other commercially important flowers, including carnations and lilies.

Consumers love novelty, says Nick Albert, a plant biologist at the New Zealand Institute for Plant & Food Research in Palmerston North, New Zealand. And people actively seek out plants with blue flowers to fill their gardens.

Plenty of flowers are bluish, but its rare to find true blue in nature, says Naonobu Noda, a plant researcher at the National Agriculture and Food Research Organization near Tsukuba, Japan, and lead study author. Scientists, including Noda, have tried to artificially produce blue blooms for years: efforts that have often produced violet or bluish hues in flowers such as roses and carnations. Part of the problem is that naturally blue blossoming plants arent closely related enough to commercially important flowers for traditional methods including selective breeding to work.

Most truly blue blossoms overexpress genes that trigger the production of pigments called delphinidin-based anthocyanins. The trick to getting blue flowers in species that arent naturally that colour is inserting the right combination of genes into their genomes. Noda came close in a 2013 study2 when he and his colleagues found that adding a gene from a naturally blue Canterbury bells flower (Campanula medium) into the DNA of chrysanthemums (Chrysanthemum morifolium) produced a violet-hued bloom.

Noda says he and his team expected that they would need to manipulate many more genes to get the blue chrysanthemum they produced in their latest study. But to their surprise, adding only one more borrowed gene from the naturally blue butterfly pea plant (Clitoria ternatea) was enough.

Anthocyanins can turn petals red, violet or blue, depending on the pigments structure. Noda and his colleagues found that genes from the Canterbury bells and butterfly pea altered the molecular structure of the anthocyanin in the chrysanthemum. When the modified pigments interacted with compounds called flavone glucosides, the resulting chrysanthemum flowers were blue. The team tested the wavelengths given off by their blossoms in several ways to ensure that the flowers were truly blue.

The quest for blue blooms wouldn't only be applicable to the commercial flower market. Studying how these pigments work could also lead to the sustainable manufacture of artificial pigments, says Silvia Vignolini, a physicist at the University of Cambridge, UK, who has studied the molecular structure of the intensely blue marble berry.

Regardless, producing truly blue flowers is a great achievement and demonstrates that the underlying chemistry required to achieve 'blue' is complex and remains to be fully understood, says Albert.

Read more:
'True blue' chrysanthemum flowers produced with genetic engineering - Nature.com

July 27, 2017 Which is more disruptive to a plant: genetic engineering or conventional breeding?

It often surprises people to learn that GE commonly causes less disruption to plants than conventional techniques of breeding. But equally profound is the realization that the latest GE techniques, coupled with a rapidly expanding ability to analyze massive amounts of genetic material, allow us to make super-modest changes in crop plant genes that will enable farmers to produce more food with fewer adverse environmental impacts. Such super-modest changes are possible with CRISPR-based genome editing, a powerful set of new genetic tools that is leading a revolution in biology.

My interest in GE crops stems from my desire to provide more effective and sustainable plant disease control for farmers worldwide. Diseases often destroy 10 to 15 percent of potential crop production, resulting in global losses of billions of dollars annually. The risk of disease-related losses provides an incentive to farmers to use disease-control products such as pesticides. One of my strongest areas of expertise is in the use of pesticides for disease control. Pesticides certainly can be useful in farming systems worldwide, but they have significant downsides from a sustainability perspective. Used improperly, they can contaminate foods. They can pose a risk to farm workers. And they must be manufactured, shipped and applied all processes with a measurable environmental footprint. Therefore, I am always seeking to reduce pesticide use by offering farmers more sustainable approaches to disease management.

What follows are examples of how minimal GE changes can be applied to make farming more environmentally friendly by protecting crops from disease. They represent just a small sampling of the broad landscape of opportunities for enhancing food security and agricultural sustainability that innovations in molecular biology offer today.

Genetically altering crops the way these examples demonstrate creates no cause for concern for plants or people. Mutations occur naturally every time a plant makes a seed; in fact, they are the very foundation of evolution. All of the food we eat has all kinds of mutations, and eating plants with mutations does not cause mutations in us.

Knocking Out Susceptibility

A striking example of how a tiny genetic change can make a big difference to plant health is the strategy of knocking out a plant gene that microorganisms can benefit from. Invading microorganisms sometimes hijack certain plant molecules to help themselves infect the plant. A gene that produces such a plant molecule is known as a susceptibility gene.

We can use CRISPR-based genome editing to create a targeted mutation in a susceptibility gene. A change of as little as a single nucleotide in the plants genetic material the smallest genetic change possible can confer disease resistance in a way that is absolutely indistinguishable from natural mutations that can happen spontaneously. Yet if the target gene and mutation site are carefully selected, a one-nucleotide mutation may be enough to achieve an important outcome.

There is a substantial body of research showing proof-of-concept that a knockout of a susceptibility gene can increase resistance in plants to a very wide variety of disease-causing microorganisms. An example that caught my attention pertained to powdery mildew of wheat, because fungicides (pesticides that control fungi) are commonly used against this disease. While this particular genetic knockout is not yet commercialized, I personally would rather eat wheat products from varieties that control disease through genetics than from crops treated with fungicides.

The Power of Viral Snippets

Plant viruses are often difficult to control in susceptible crop varieties. Conventional breeding can help make plants resistant to viruses, but sometimes it is not successful.

Early approaches to engineering virus resistance in plants involved inserting a gene from the virus into the plants genetic material. For example, plant-infecting viruses are surrounded by a protective layer of protein, called the coat protein. The gene for the coat protein of a virus called papaya ring spot virus was inserted into papaya. Through a process called RNAi, this empowers the plant to inactivate the virus when it invades. GE papaya has been a spectacular success, in large part saving the Hawaiian papaya industry.

Aerial view of a field trial showing virus-resistant papaya growing well while the surrounding susceptible papaya is severely damaged by the virus. Reproduced with permission from Gonsalves, D., et al. 2004. Transgenic virus-resistant papaya: From hope to reality in controlling papaya ringspot virus in Hawaii. APSnet Features. Online. DOI: 10.1094/APSnetFeature-2004-0704

Through time, researchers discovered that even just a very small fragment from one viral gene can stimulate RNAi-based resistance if precisely placed within a specific location in the plants DNA. Even better, they found we can stack resistance genes engineered with extremely modest changes in order to create a plant highly resistant to multiple viruses. This is important because, in the field, crops are often exposed to infection by several viruses.

Does eating this tiny bit of a viral gene sequence concern me? Absolutely not, for many reasons, including:

Tweaking Sentry Molecules

Microorganisms can often overcome plants biochemical defenses by producing molecules called effectors that interfere with those defenses. Plants respond by evolving proteins to recognize and disable these effector molecules. These recognition proteins are called R proteins (R standing for resistance). Their job is to recognize the invading effector molecule and trigger additional defenses. A third interesting approach, then, to help plants resist an invading microorganism is to engineer an R protein so that it recognizes effector molecules other than the one it evolved to detect. We can then use CRISPR to supply a plant with the very small amount of DNA needed to empower it to make this protein.

This approach, like susceptibility knockouts, is quite feasible, based on published research. Commercial implementation will require some willing private- or public-sector entity to do the development work and to face the very substantial and costly challenges of the regulatory process.

Engineered for Sustainability

The three examples here show that extremely modest engineered changes in plant genetics can result in very important benefits. All three examples involve engineered changes that trigger the natural defenses of the plant. No novel defense mechanisms were introduced in these research projects, a fact that may appeal to some consumers. The wise use of the advanced GE methods illustrated here, as well as others described elsewhere, has the potential to increase the sustainability of our food production systems, particularly given the well-established safety of GE crops and their products for consumption.

View original post here:
When genetic engineering is the environmentally friendly choice - Ensia

The last several decades have witnessed a remarkable increase in crop yields doubling major grain crops since the 1950s. But a significant part of the world still suffers from malnutrition, and these gains in grains and other crops probably wont be enough to feed a growing global population.

These facts have put farmers and agricultural scientists on a quest to squeeze more yield from plants (and livestock), and how to make these yield increases more sustainable. The best land is already taken and could be altered by climate changes, so new crops may have to be grown in less hospitable locations, and the soils and nutrition in existing lands need to be better preserved.

Several methods are being used to boost yields with less fertilizer or pesticides, including traditional combination techniques, marker-assisted breeding, and, of course, trans- and cis-genic modifications.

One way to get more food from a plant is through another genetic switch. It may be possible to genetically, either through hybridization, mutagenesis, or genetic engineering to alter a plant so that it transforms from an annual (one you have to replant every year) to a perennial (which you plant once and can thrive for many years).

This video from Washington State University discusses some advantages of perennial crops:

Most staples, like corn, wheat, sorghum and other grains are annuals. About 75 percent of US and 69 percent of global croplands are cereal, oilseed and legumes, and all of those are annuals, said Jerry Glover, plant geneticist at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, and John Reganold, a geneticist at Washington State University. This means, they wrote:

They must be replanted each year from seed, require large amounts of expensive fertilizers and pesticides, poorly protect soil and water, and provide little habitat for wildlife. Their production emits significant greenhouse gases, contributing to climate change that can in turn have adverse effects on agricultural productivity.

Perennials, meanwhile, have longer growing seasons and more extensive roots, making them more productive, and more efficient at capturing nutrients and water from the soil. Replanting isnt necessary, reducing pesticide and fertilizer use, and reducing the need to use tractors and other mechanical planters in fields. Erosion also can be reduced. Its been estimated that annual grains can lose five times more water and 35 times more nitrate than perennial grains.All plants at one time were perennials, and breeders and farmers concentrated on breeding new annuals that could meet a farmers (and consumers) needs.

Now, the table has turned. Genetics may make the annual-to-perennial transformation easier.The switch to perennials is not a new avenue of research, but its been a rocky road. Scientists in the former USSR and the US tried to create perennial wheat in the 1960s, but the offspring plants were sterile and didnt deliver on desired traits. Since then, scientists worldwide have looked at deriving perennials from annual and perennial parents using molecular markers tied to desirable traits (and the genes responsible for them). This technique, and knowing the genotypes of more and more plants, has made it possible to combine desirable genes with traditional and genetic engineering methods to find these desirable perennial plants.

Glover has pointed out that molecular markers tied to desirable traits (higher yields, disease resistance, etc.) can allow for faster breeding by determining the sources of plant variation, and that plant genomics has facilitated the combination of genes without having to field test over years at a time. Genetic modifications can also help spur this along.

Andrew Paterson, head of the plant genome laboratory at the University of Georgia, has studied for years the development of perennial sorghum one of the top five cerealon the planet. Sorghums drought resistance has made it useful as a grain and biomass source in degraded soil, and a perennial version (which has happened spontaneously twice) could reduce drought losses even to other crops. Patersons genetic analysis of wild perennials and cultivated annuals has shown the genes involved in perennial ism and offered DNA markers for more precise breeding.

Techniques like CRISPR/Cas9, which can precisely edit, insert or delete genes at specific locations, are being studied for their possible role in transforming perennials, but a few challenges remain. Chung-Jui Tsai at the University of Georgia, recently showed that CRISPR could be used to alter genes in existing perennials (like fruit and nut trees, for example), once some hurdles like frequent polymorphisms and other variations could be overcome.

Still others are not so optimistic about using genetic modification to enact the perennial-annual switch. First, the whole field would require much more research funding than currently exists, Glover warns. Then, as Paterson told Brooke Borel in her article in Popular Science, perennial traits are much more complicated than those currently addressed by genetic engineering. We dont really know all of the genes involved, not yet:

We dont actually have any of the genes in hand. We know where they are in the genome and we are working on their locations more and more finely, but there arent any of these genes that we can yet point to the specific gene among the 30,000 or so in sorghum. Even if they did know the exact genes, most GMOs that are currently available only insert a single new trait rather than information from multiple genes. The technology isnt yet able to handle something so complicated as perennialism.

Andrew Porterfieldis a writer, editor and communications consultant for academic institutions, companies and non-profits in the life sciences. He is based in Camarillo, California. Follow@AMPorterfieldon Twitter.

Related Stories

See original here:
Can genetic modification turn annual crops into perennials? - Genetic Literacy Project