Gene editing made simple

Marshall, along with representatives and members of the American Seed Trade Association, are working with gene editing to edit out and edit in traits and qualities in plants and beyond. Long-form, CRISPR is Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. Cas9 is a nuclease that is used with another element to “cut” a cell’s genome and allow the editing, consisting of the addition of or deletion of specific genes. Gene editing is the hot topic for scientists in fields ranging from agriculture to medicine.In agriculture, the technology holds promise for doing everything from fighting potentially devastating crop diseases to improving the flavor and yield of vegetables.But for the industry involved in using the technology, making sure that it and the crops it’s used in will be accepted around the globe is a priority.