rice – BioQuakes

A team of scientists has discovered that through the use of CRISPR, they were able to create a rice plant that can asexually reproduce. The problem with previous strands of genetically modified rice plants, those bread to have a higher yield, is that their progeny did not always carry this desired trait. So farmers have to buy new genetically modified seeds every year to ensure that they will get that same yield.

That is where the magic of CRISPR comes into the equation. The first step in the process was editing the eggs of the plant by implanting a promoter that allows the egg to start the embryo growing process without a sperm. One issue still lingered, the process of meiosis that was occurring could not produce viable offspring because it only had half of the genetic material that the progeny would need. Another team of scientists from the French National Institute for Agricultural Technology discovered that by using CRISPR to turn off three specific genes they could stop the meiosis process and allow the plant to reproduce asexually.

This process is still only 30% efficient at this stage. However, the offspring they do produce are able to asexually produce more clones of themselves. Now the process starts to try and make this process more efficient. I think these plants could have a major impact on the agricultural industry, especially with food shortages becoming more present as the human population rapidly increases.

What do you think? Have we overstepped our bounds by editing nature? Or have we pioneered a new solution for the world hunger question on everyone’s minds?

For years, scientists have been trying to find ways to avoid the imminent world food shortage crisis. Is there a scientific breakthrough that could help the world get more grain yield in plants and help avoid a worldwide food shortage? These are questions that farmers and scientists around the world have been trying to find the solution to for decades. Professor Xin-Xiang Peng, of South China Agricultural University, and his team believe that they have found the answer, a process they call the GOC Bypass method.

Professor Xin-Xiang Peng and his team conducted thorough research on rice plants, specifically, and tried to find a way to further maximize their grain yields. Peng and his team believe that with the growing population of the world and less useable cultivatable soil, scientists must find a way to maximize grain yield, in order to produce more food. After intensive research, Peng and his partner, Zheng-Hui He, believe that they have found a way to partially bypass a process called photorespiration and reuse the materials used in photorespiration in photosynthesis. This process is called GOC Bypass. Xiang and his team bioengineered the CO2 to be diverted from photorespiration and to instead be used during photosynthesis, causing increased grain yield.

Peng and He discovered that bioengineered rice plants have a 27% greater grain yield than normal rice plants. To achieve this, they converted a molecule called glycolate, which is a product of photorespiration, and converted it to CO2, using three rice enzymes: glycolate oxidase, oxalate oxidase, and catalase (AKA GOC). The CO2 was then diverted to photosynthesis, which was able to, in turn, create a higher grain yield as the photorespiration in the rice plants went down by approximately 25% and the net photosynthetic rate increased by about 15%, due to the higher concentrations of CO2 being able to be used for photosynthesis. Thus, increasing the grain yield in rice plants and harvesting more food from the same crop.

Biologically engineering food has been around for most of the 2000’s, but the GOC Bypass method is a new method that could potentially help combat the need for more food, due to the population growth and the decrease of cultivatable land. Peng and He’s research is promising, but it is still in its early stage. So, only time will tell if the GOC Bypass method will be of any use to mankind in the future and if this process can be used with a variety of different crops.

What do you think? Could the GOC Bypass method help solve the worlds emerging food crisis? Only time will tell.

The research is from Zheng-Hui He, Xin-Xiang Peng’s Engineering a New Chloroplastic Photorespiratory Bypass to Increase Photosynthetic Efficiency and Productivity in Rice, at the South China Agricultural University. The research was published by the Molecular Plant Shanghai Editorial Office in association with Cell Press, an imprint of Elsevier Inc., on behalf of CSPB and IPPE, SIBS, CAS.

BioQuakes

AP Biology class blog for discussing current research in Biology

Tag: rice

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GOC Bypass… The Future of Food?

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