Gene editing is a new technology that scientists are using to make targeted, precise changes to the DNA of living organisms. While these edits happen at a microscopic (molecular) level, they have the potential to make a significant positive impact on our world.

In the field of medicine, scientists are researching how gene editing can treat diseases such as cancer, sickle cell anemia and a wide range of genetic disorders.  Read How can CRISPR treat disease?

In agriculture, gene editing is used to breed plants and animals, reduce diseases, and minimize the impact of pests and severe weather. Gene editing can also be used to make foods taste better, increase nutrients and prolong shelf-life to reduce waste.

For example, a new type of leafy greens that are higher in nutrients and more flavorful are now available in foodservice. Gene edited tomatoes are sold in Japan and the UK. Many more gene-edited foods are on the horizon, with more than 500 products under development globally, according to S&P Global.

As the use of gene editing continues to become more prevalent in food and agriculture, Best Food Facts set out to learn more about it. We reached out to three experts – Dr. Rodolphe Barrangou, Distinguished Professor at North Carolina State University; Dr. Zhongde Wang, Professor at Utah State University; and Dr. Jennifer Kuzma, Goodnight-NC GSK Foundation Distinguished Professor in Social Sciences at North Carolina State University and co-founder and co-director of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center – to get their insight about this new technology.

The series contains three articles:

• What is gene editing?
• Are gene-edited foods safe to eat?
• How can gene editing make the food system more sustainable?

What is gene editing?

Dr. Barrangou: “It is a set of molecular tools that enables molecular biologists to edit the DNA sequence of virtually any organism on planet Earth, anyway we want at speed and at scale.”

Dr. Kuzma: “It is a set of techniques for very site-specific introductions or changes in the genome at a particular location. You can make very small changes to the genome. Gene editing often relies on enzymes called site-directed nucleases that will cut the DNA in a particular location. Then if you provide an additional DNA template, the genome will copy that change, much like changing a letter in a word or sentence. That’s what distinguishes gene editing from the first generation of genetically engineered crops, which were not as targeted or specific.”

Improvements through history

Gene editing is the latest technique being used to develop better food.

Even before scientists fully understood genes and DNA, they studied genetics searching for ways to make life better. For instance, about 3,000 years ago, farmers in Asia bred horses and donkeys to produce mules for transportation and farm work. The corn we know today was first grown by Indigenous peoples in North America, who bred maize plants to produce better grain. Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, kohlrabi and brussels sprouts all came from the wild mustard plant, which farmers bred to develop specific traits. And now, gene editing is accelerating those improvements.

Production animals such as cows, pigs and chickens have been bred to improve the production of milk, beef, bacon and eggs, Dr. Barrangou said. The challenge for scientists is that it takes a long time for a plant or animal to grow and pass the desired traits to its offspring. Gene editing allows researchers to speed the process.

“Instead of waiting years and multiple breeding cycles to have more flavorful tomatoes or higher yielding corn or better tasting kale, or brighter, more oxidant-containing berries and grapes, we can use genome editing technologies to bestow some of those traits upon the species of interest at speed, scale and cost,” Dr. Barrangou said.

Learn more about how gene editing is being used in food:

• Tomatoes with more Vitamin D
• Soybean oil without trans fats
• Cows with a slick coat to tolerate heat
• Better tasting mustard greens
• Progress toward disease-resistant pigs
• Removing allergens from wheat, peanuts and milk

What’s the difference between GMOs and gene editing?

Dr. Wang: “GMOs refers to any organism whose genome has been modified. The term GMOs was coined before gene editing techniques were available. Gene editing is totally different from the traditional genetic modification methods used in making GMOs in that gene editing is a process of changing the genome with single nucleotide precision while traditional genetic modification tends to introduce DNA from other organisms.”

Read Are GMOs Good or Bad?

What are some of the uses of gene editing that you see as most promising?

Dr. Barrangou: “The ability to recode the code of life of all organisms from very simple basic viruses to microscopic bacteria, fungi, yeast and the like, all the way to sophisticated large organisms like livestock that we eat, plants including crops that we consume and of course, humans for medical applications. And even in environmental stewardship for things like trees and forestry. It is a transformative, disruptive technology that allows humankind to recode the code of life across the planet.”

Dr. Wang: “Developing gene therapy techniques for human medicine, developing new animal models, and improving the genetics of livestock. It could also be very promising in synthetic biology.”

Synthetic biology involves redesigning organisms for useful purposes by engineering them to have new abilities.

Is there anything you would like people to know about gene editing?

Dr. Barrangou: “As scientists, we want to use the best science and technology in the world to solve the grandest problems that we have in humankind. We use the best technologies available to us – the best tools, the most sophisticated data and insights and resources – to tackle those challenges, such as sustainable agriculture, expanding the human lifespan, tackling disease and beating cancer. Growing stuff out of nothing to feed a nutritious diet to billions of people is not a trivial process.”

Gene editing is a technique that precisely alters the genome of an organism to make beneficial changes. This new technology has the potential to prevent or treat human and animal diseases, combat the impacts of climate change and increase the sustainability of the food system.

The post What is Gene Editing? appeared first on Best Food Facts.

In agriculture, gene editing is being used in plants and animals to reduce disease and the impact of pests. Read more about the science of gene editing.

In the United States, we rely on a network of government agencies to ensure the safety of all food, including food produced using advanced breeding techniques like gene editing.

• Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates food made from plants and animals developed using gene editing. All foods regulated by the FDA that are produced, processed, stored, shipped or sold in the United States are held to the same safety standards.
• U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) oversees the safety of gene editing in plants.
• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) makes sure gene-edited organisms do not pose risks to human health or the environment.

For example, before gene-edited livestock used in food production can be sold in the U.S., the developer is required to complete FDA’s safety review process. This process includes submitting years of research and trial data to prove the application is both safe and effective. In 2022, FDA ruled that the first slick-haired cattle that were gene-edited to better tolerate heat are “low risk and do not raise any safety concerns.”

We reached out to three experts to get their insights on this new technology that has the potential to significantly improve our food system. Dr. Jennifer Kuzma is the Goodnight-NC GSK Foundation Distinguished Professor in Social Sciences at North Carolina State University and co-founder and co-director of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center; Dr. Zhongde Wang is a Professor in the Department of Animal, Dairy and Veterinary Sciences at Utah State University and Dr. Rodolphe Barrangou is the Todd R. Klaenhammer Distinguished Professor at North Carolina State University.

How is gene editing being used in food and agriculture?

Dr. Kuzma: “Most of the gene editing work taking place now involves making food healthier or more sustainable. Gene edits have been made for yield enhancements, increasing nutrients in plants, improving taste and heat and cold tolerance and disease resistance for plants and animals.”

Dr. Wang: “In livestock, gene editing has been used to introduce single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) among different breeds of a species to improve certain traits, such as heat tolerance, resistance to infectious disease, etc.”

Learn more about how gene editing is being used in food:

• Tomatoes with more Vitamin D
• Soybean oil without trans fats
• Cows with a slick coat to tolerate heat
• Better tasting mustard greens
  
• Progress toward disease-resistant pigs
• Removing allergens from wheat, peanuts and milk
• Developing more sustainable ingredients

What is the potential impact of gene editing technology?

Dr. Barrangou: “I think it’s a game changer. Think about the ability to recode the code of life of organisms from very simple basic viruses to microscopic bacteria all the way to sophisticated large organisms, like animals including livestock that we eat, plants, including crops that we consume, and of course, humans, for all the medical applications we can think of and even in environmental stewardship, things like trees and forestry. It’s a transformative, disruptive technology that allows humankind to recode the code of life.”

Because gene editing has so many uses, it is important that technology developers use the powerful tool safely and transparently. Learn what the Coalition for Responsible Gene Editing in Agriculture is doing to build trust in gene editing.

Is it safe to eat gene-edited foods?

Dr. Wang: “With scientific vigor, regulatory oversights and approvals, it is safe to consume foods from gene-edited plants and animals. Any genetic changes, including any unintentional changes, and biological consequences need to be clearly validated. It is safe to say that, if a naturally existing trait from one animal is engineered into another in the same species, there should be no concern to consume the food from the edited animal.”

Dr. Barrangou: “90 to 95% of all the genome editing work is focusing on human therapeutics. There are hundreds of people who have been dosed with genome editing, medicines, therapies and therapeutics that enable us to correct ‘typos’ in human DNA that are responsible for terminal diseases. The FDA is confident enough to dose American citizens with CRISPR medicines because it is safe. I would argue that if it’s safe enough to put in our veins, it’s safe enough to put in our mouths.”

As gene-edited foods start to become available, what assurances can we have that they will be safe?

Dr. Kuzma: “The first thing is to keep in mind that companies do not want to offer a product that isn’t safe. Companies have their own internal checks to look for possible issues. The second thing is that there is a consultation process through the Food and Drug Administration. Companies submit data to FDA, which will look for different compositional changes in the product that might trigger a safety issue.”

To date, there are two gene-edited foods on the market — a purple tomato with increased antioxidants and soybean oil high in oleic acid. A new, better-tasting leafy green has also received USDA approval and will be introduced in the summer of 2023. There are hundreds more gene-edited foods in the development pipeline and they must all go through the stringent regulatory review and approval process before they can be sold in the U.S. Learn more about the specific regulations FDA has for plants and animals.

Gene editing is a technology that makes precise changes in the genome of an organism. A network of U.S. regulatory agencies provide oversight using a stringent review and approval process to make sure gene-edited foods are safe for people, animals and the environment.

The post Is Gene-Edited Food Safe to Eat? appeared first on Best Food Facts.

Gene editing could also make a significant difference in making agriculture more sustainable. By helping plants and animals become more resilient to climate change and disease, the technology could lead to a more resilient and affordable food supply.

Best Food Facts contacted three experts – Dr. Rodolphe Barrangou, Distinguished Professor at North Carolina State University, Dr. Zhongde Wang, Professor at Utah State University, and Dr. Jennifer Kuzma, Goodnight-NC GSK Foundation Distinguished Professor in Social Sciences at North Carolina State University and co-founder and co-director of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center – to find out more about gene editing and its use in food production. Read more in the series:

• What is gene editing?
• Are gene-edited foods safe to eat?

Improving animal welfare

In much the same way that gene therapy is being researched to cure diseases in humans, researchers are using gene editing to help animals. Dr. Wang’s lab at Utah State University is among the first to employ gene editing techniques to improve the genetics of livestock.

“In livestock, we are in the process of editing the genomes of cattle, sheep, goat and alpaca both for agricultural and medical applications,” he said. “In livestock, gene editing can be used to make the animals disease-resistant and better able to handle cold and heat stresses.”

Here are a few real-world examples of how gene editing is being applied to help animals live better. Gene editing is helping pigs develop resistance to a devastating virus called PRRS (Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome), which affects pork producers all over the world. For cattle, the FDA recently approved the sale of beef from cattle with genes altered with CRISPR to have shorter hair. These “slick coat” cattle are better acclimated to live in warm climates.

Safety for animals and people

Is gene editing safe for the animals involved?

Dr. Kuzma: “Animals are regulated a bit more stringently by the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA has a mandatory policy to review all animals that are genetically altered, which provides more assurance of safety.”

Is it safe to eat food made from animals that have been edited?

Dr. Wang: “With scientific vigor, regulatory oversights and approvals, it is safe to consume foods from gene-edited animals.”

Learn more about the safety of gene edited foods.

Improving sustainability

By helping farmers to grow more food by using less land and water, gene editing could make agriculture more sustainable. Dr. Barrangou is researching gene editing to enable trees and forests to be more resilient to climate change.

Dr. Barrangou: “Think of bio-resilience as the ability of something to sustain itself in the face of global warming, in the face of drought or pest, whether it’s insects, viruses, bacteria or fungi. If you’re a tree and you’re in place for hundreds of years, you can’t go and escape. You can’t migrate north if it’s getting hot. You can’t migrate closer to the water if it’s getting dry. So we have to breed in those resistance traits to provide a more sustainable and resilient forest, whether you’re going to use that to grow fruits or nuts or capture carbon.”

Gene editing helps scientists to speed the natural process of breeding and reproducing, which makes it especially important in regard to climate change.

Dr. Barrangou: “The sense of urgency and timelines under which we can develop those products is very important. There’s a heightened sensitivity and urgency to address sustainable farming.”

Gene editing is an emerging technology used to treat disease in humans and animals. It could also help scientists develop plants and animals that are more resilient in the face of climate change.

The post How Can Gene Editing Make the Food System More Sustainable? appeared first on Best Food Facts.

This is an especially exciting time as scientists are seeing their research applied in the field, leading to food that is healthier, better quality and more sustainably produced.

High-oleic soybean oil is the first gene-edited food product available on the market. This heart-healthy oil has zero trans fats, longer shelf life and performs well in baking and frying.

“We wanted to use gene editing to create a soybean variety that was higher in monounsaturated fats and compete effectively with oils like sunflower, canola or olive oil,” said Dr. Dan Voytas, a professor at the University of Minnesota, who helped develop the gene-edited high-oleic soybean.

The innovation was possible because gene editing allows for very precise changes in the plant’s genome, Dr. Voytas said.

Dr. Steve Whitham is working to improve soybeans, an important crop that is used in food, oil and animal feed. One goal of his research is to make farming more sustainable by helping farmers grow more using fewer inputs and natural resources.

“It’s estimated that we lose 15 to 20 percent of the soybean crop to diseases each year,” said Dr. Whitham, professor at Iowa State University and co-director of the Crop Bioengineering Center. “In the last severe drought in 2012, we lost 9 percent of soybean yield. Disease and environmental stress such as drought are important factors that prevent the soybean crop from reaching its full yield potential.”

Researchers are also using gene editing to increase the protein content of soybeans for use in plant-based foods and as a source of feed for animals.

Three years ago, Best Food Facts spoke to Dr. Jessica Lyons at the University of California-Berkeley’s Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) about using gene editing to improve cassava, an important part of the diet for nearly 1 billion people in the world. The plant contains compounds that can cause people to be poisoned from cyanide if the root has not been sufficiently processed. If people are ingesting the cyanide, over time, this can lead to neurological disorders.

For the team developing the cassava plant, the project has personal meaning.

“Growing up in a Colombian family, I knew cassava by the name yuca. It would be part of many delicious meals at home. So for me, there is a personal connection to working on this crop,” said Dr. Michael Gomez, also of the IGI. “I was surprised to learn about cassava’s toxicity and how it could negatively affect consumers in dire circumstances. Generating non-toxic cassava is a stellar use of the CRISPR technology and has the potential to mitigate global food challenges.”

The researchers are excited to see their research come to fruition.

“We have shown, in three different cassava varieties, that we have completely prevented cyanogenesis. That is, we have used genome editing to make plants that don’t make cyanide,” Dr. Lyons said. Read more about the research here.

What is gene editing?

“Gene editing is a very precise way of modifying genes within a plant cell. The types of edits that we create are no different than the variation in genes that occurs in nature,” Dr. Whitham said.

CRISPR is one common technique used for gene editing. The process is a way of speeding up the natural evolution of genetics.

“Traditional breeding methods can be laborious and time-consuming. With gene editing, the desired DNA alterations can be acquired within a single generation and the end product could be indistinguishable from a traditionally bred crop,” Dr. Gomez said.

How can gene editing help the environment?

In addition to improving food, gene editing can also help farmers control diseases and adapt to changing environmental conditions.

“There are many benefits to the environment by reducing the carbon footprint of producing soybeans, as well as reducing the application of crop protection products,” Dr. Whitham said. “We’re learning more about genes that control plant responses to disease and stress.”

By precisely editing these genes, the plants can be made to better resist disease and withstand stress. Scientists see many ways gene editing can be applied to create climate solutions.

“Genome editing is a great precision breeding tool. Against the backdrop of a rapidly changing climate, there’s an urgent need for new climate-resilient crop varieties, and this tool has the potential to help us breed them more quickly and more precisely than conventional breeding,” Dr. Lyons said. “It can have huge benefits for agriculture, including for disease resistance, and even for climate change mitigation — for example, it could be used to engineer plants with deeper roots that store more carbon in the soil.”

Dr. Voytas said gene editing might be used to develop soybean oil that is similar to palm oil. That enhances sustainability, as palm oil production often leads to deforestation and the oil must be transported great distances.

“We could easily use gene editing to create a palm oil equivalent that is produced locally and sustainably,” he said.

Gene editing is a technology being used to make precise changes in genetic material to improve food quality and increase the sustainability of farming and food.

Developed with support of United Soybean Board

The post What Benefits Can Gene Editing Bring to Food Quality and Sustainability? appeared first on Best Food Facts.

From enhancing our favorite foods to helping farmers grow healthy, abundant crops in a sustainable way, gene-edited soybeans offer so many benefits.

Learn more about why Gene, scientists, farmers and those who produce our food are excited about an amazing technology that makes life better for you and our planet.

The post Meet Gene the Bean! appeared first on Best Food Facts.

Genetically engineered plants or animals, often called GMOs, were developed through biotechnology and often carry genes from a bacteria or virus. Biotechnology has been used to help crops better withstand drought, be resistant to insects or be better suited to control weeds. Genetic modifications can help animals to better utilize the feed they eat. Find out What foods have been genetically modified?

GMOs and Sustainability

In this series, we are looking at sustainability and the inherent tradeoffs and benefits of specific practices in farming and food production.

To learn more about biotechnology, we reached out to Dr. Pamela Ronald, a distinguished professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of California-Davis. She has gained worldwide recognition for her work in genetically engineering rice to better withstand plant diseases and flooding.

“Rice is an important staple food crop for more than half the world’s people, so it’s really important to work with,” Dr. Ronald said. “Even a small change that you can make in the ability of the plant to survive stress or resist disease can have an impact on millions of people.”

Are GMOs good or bad?

That depends.

First, Dr. Ronald said the biotech foods are safe to grow and to eat. “There’s no question about that. They’ve been planted for 25 years now,” she said. “They have reduced the use of chemical insecticide, and I think that’s really important for people to know.”

Find out more about GMOs and human health.

Dr. Ronald also explained that biotechnology is just one of the tools farmers can use to help produce food. When farmers have access to a variety of tools or techniques, they can choose the ones that work best for each crop, for each location and for each situation.

“All farmers rely on seeds to grow their crops, and farmers are looking for seeds that help make agriculture more productive and sustainable,” Dr. Ronald said. “They want to use less land, use water more efficiently, use soil more efficiently. They want to reduce the use of harmful inputs. Every type of contribution can be really important for farmers.”

Dr. Ronald’s husband is an organic farmer. She noted that every type of farming has tradeoffs. As an example, in order to grow a crop, the soil must be disturbed and native plants are removed.

The key is weighing the impacts, tradeoffs and benefits, and then making an informed choice. “We farm because we have to eat,” she noted. “It’s a huge tradeoff. How do we farm more sustainably and try to minimize our impact on the environment?”

Some farmers have found that GMOs can contribute to making farming more sustainable. Dr. Ronald gave an example of farmers in Bangladesh growing eggplant. Previously, farmers needed to spray insecticide several times a week during the growing season to save the crop from destructive insects. In recent years, they have planted a genetically modified eggplant seed that contains a gene from a bacteria that prevents the insects from reproducing. As a result, the farmers use much less insecticide spray, the crops have yielded more eggplant from the same amount of land and families have a better income. You can learn more about it in Dr. Ronald’s Ted Talk.

Because there is a lot of misunderstanding and incorrect information about GMOs, Dr. Ronald encourages those with questions to explore reputable sources of information, such as the National Academy of Sciences. or the USDA.

“I think it’s important to realize that all farmers rely on seeds that have been genetically altered in some manner. The method is not important. What matters is what kind of trait that’s being imparted to the plant,” she said.

“It’s always good to just think about the challenges faced by farmers. Floods come through, which is predicted to occur more frequently with climate change. Then some farmers can’t grow their crops because there’s not enough water. Some farmers’ crops are devastated by insect pests. So anytime you can develop crops that are resistant to insects, it can have a massive benefit to farmers.”

Weighing the Benefits and Tradeoffs

GMOs and biotechnology have both benefits and tradeoffs. The benefits are that GMOs can help plants or animals grow more efficiently, which means more food produced using fewer natural resources. GMOs can reduce the use of insecticides and harmful herbicides.

On the other hand, GMO crops often involve the use of the herbicide, glyphosate, which is concerning to some consumers. Some perceive that food produced through GMOs is less natural, because of the modification process and introduction of genetic material not native to the original organism. Some people have concerns that genes from the modified plants or animals could transfer to other organisms. There are also concerns that farmers’ reliance on certain types of GMOs could contribute to biodiversity loss or cause over-production.

In the United States, some people have reservations about biotechnology that is owned by corporations, and they worry this could put small companies or farmers at a disadvantage. In other countries, such as in the case of Bangladesh’s eggplant, the seeds were generated by non-profits and distributed free to farmers.

Biotechnology should not be viewed as a one-size-fits all solution to farming challenges. It must be managed in conjunction with other techniques.

“It’s not that once you choose biotech over another approach, that’s it. It really depends on the particular farming system and what’s being used at the time,” Dr. Ronald said.

Science is a continuum with each researcher’s work building on others. Biotechnology can be part of the solution to make agriculture more sustainable around the world.

GMO involves the genetic modification of plants and animals to improve crops and food production. With any practice, there are tradeoffs and benefits. Many experts concur that GMO technology offers tools and solutions that farmers can use to make food production more sustainable.

The post Sustainability: Are GMOs Good or Bad? appeared first on Best Food Facts.

A new discovery is creating a lot of interest gene editing. CRISPR is a technology that allows scientists to make precise changes in genetic code. To find out more about this scientific discovery and its potential uses, Best Food Facts asked blogger Lynne Feifer of 365 Days of Baking to bring her passion for food into the research lab and explore CRISPR technology.

Lynne interviewed Dr. Rodolphe Barrangou in his laboratory at North Carolina State University. “I tend to think of myself as a CRISPR expert and CRISPR enthusiast, as well as a food scientist,” he said.

Lynne asked Dr. Barrangue to explain what CRISPR is.

“CRISPR is actually an acronym, which stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. It’s a very cumbersome name arguably, but at the same time a very catchy and easy to remember acronym,” he said.

Dr. Barrangou explained that this gene-editing technology works much like a text editor that changes a letter in a word.

“CRISPR in many ways is a molecular scalpel that enables scientists to cut DNA. You can very precisely, very selectively, very efficiently cut DNA. That’s what geneticists do. They find a particular sentence that is unique in the book of life in the DNA code of any particular cell, look for the mistake and then replace this mistake and edit it out with this corrected version,” he explained.

There are many ways that it can be used.

“It’s a question of when, not if, CRISPR-based technologies solve the biggest challenge of medicine, things like curing HIV, curing Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy, curing cancer, curing people who are sick,” Dr. Barrangou said.

Lynne looked further into the potential for CRISPR as it relates to treating disease and making food healthier. Check out the other videos in the series: How Can CRISPR Treat Disease? and How Can CRISPR Improve Food?

The post What is CRISPR Technology? Part 1 appeared first on Best Food Facts.

CRISPR is a precise gene-editing tool that has potential to treat diseases in humans and animals. Blogger Lynne Feifer of 365 Days of Baking helped Best Food Facts find out more about this technology and how it can be used.

“This is such a powerful, potent promising technology. We have so much at stake here in food and ag for animals and plants, agriculture, biotechnology, biofuels, medicine, the clinic translational medicine to cure disease and feed the world,” said Dr. Rodolphe Barrangou, whom Lynne interviewed at his lab at North Carolina State University.

One possible application for CRISPR is in treating sickle cell, an inherited disease. The disease affects 100,000 people in the United States and is most common among African-Americans. Dr. Nazia Tabassum is a pediatric specialist who treats sickle cell patients.

“Some of the patients come in for severe complications like severe pain crisis which requires IV narcotics and hydration. Some of these kids can also have severe sickling in their lungs which we call acute chest syndrome, which is a medical emergency,” she said.

Lynne had planned to interview Shakir Cannon, who had battled sickle cell disease his entire life and was a passionate advocate for CRISPR technology. However, he passed away in December 2017.

CRISPR also has potential to ease suffering and cure diseases among animals. Lynne talked to Erin Brenneman, a pig farmer in Iowa who said they are interested in how CRISPR might cure a disease called PRRS. “The acronym PRRS stands for porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome. It is the most economically and emotionally draining disease for all those raising pigs in North America, Europe and Asia,” Brenneman said.

She said pig farmers are excited about the potential for PRRS to cure the disease.

Check out the other videos in the series What is CRISPR? and How Can CRISPR Improve Food?

The post How Can CRISPR Treat Disease? Part 2 appeared first on Best Food Facts.

Blogger Lynne Feifer of 365 Days of Baking has been learning about CRISPR gene-editing technology and its potential. Lynne is usually in her kitchen stirring up new recipes, so she was very interested to learn how CRISPR might be applied to make foods better. She started her journey with Dr. Rodolphe Barrangou who explained how this gene-editing tool works in Part 1. Part 2 looked at how CRISPR could treat disease.

“As a food blogger, I get a lot of my followers coming to me asking for diabetic recipes, gluten-free recipes, allergenic recipes. How does CRISPR fit into that?” Lynne asked.

“Enter CRISPR to the rescue,” Dr. Barrangou said. “If you are allergic or if you don’t like this particular compound in this particular trait, we can inactivate it. We can make gluten-free wheat. We can make hypoallergenic nuts. If we know what the gene is, we can take it out or turn it off or turn it down.”

That’s exactly what Dr. Jessica Lyons and her team are researching at the University of California Berkeley. Their research is focused on using CRISPR technology to remove a deadly compound in the cassava plant, which is also known as yucca.

“Cassava is a really important staple crop for about 800 million people in tropical and subtropical regions of the world,” Dr. Lyons said. She noted that stunting in children under age 5 caused by malnourishment is prevalent in the regions where cassava is widely consumed. However, the plant contains compounds that can cause people to be poisoned from cyanide if the root has not been sufficiently processed.

“If people are relying on cassava and they’re ingesting the cyanide over time, they can get these neurological disorders. The best known one is called konzo and it causes paralysis of the lower extremities,” Dr. Lyons said. “For people who eat plenty of protein in their diet, the cyanide is not as much of a threat. But for people who don’t have much to eat besides cassava, then the cyanide poisoning is more of a threat.”

In the lab, she is working to remove the compounds that cause poisoning.

“We’re going to use CRISPR as a tool to knock out some genes that are very important for the pathway that result in these cyanogenic glucosides. We expect that by knocking these genes out, we’ll remove the cyanogenic glucosides from the root and so the cassava will not release the cyanide any more,” Dr. Lyons said.

Lynne observed that Dr. Lyons is very passionate about the project and asked why. “I’ve been the recipient of a great deal of privilege in my life and I’m aware of that. I think that my work on projects like this are a great opportunity to use the knowledge and the resources and skills that I have to have a positive impact on the world,” she said.

Lynne said her experiences learning about CRISPR had been enlightening.

“After my series of conversations with researchers, it is clear to me CRISPR technology has the potential to make a positive impact on the world in human medicine, disease prevention and food improvements –- and that’s only a few of the possibilities,” she said.

The other videos in the series are What is CRISPR Technology? and How Can CRISPR Treat Disease?

The post How Can CRISPR Improve Food? Part 3 appeared first on Best Food Facts.

We reached out to Robert Wager,  biochemist and member of the Biology Department of Vancouver Island University, and Dr. Steve Taylor, Professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology and Co-founder and Co-Director of the Food Allergy Research and Resource Program, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, to give us further clarification on what gluten-free wheat means.

Wager explained what gluten is. “Gluten is made up of two main types of protein, one of which is gliadin. Gliadin is the protein that causes the most allergic reactions.” The new gluten-free variety is being developed from regular wheat that has been gene-edited to reduce the amount of gliadin.

How do this gliadin protein and gene-editing work? Gene editing, or CRISPR, is a group of technologies that allow genetic material to be added, removed or altered at a particular location in a genome.  In this case, scientists go into the wheat’s DNA and edit out a particular amount of gliadin.

“Gluten-free wheat is a 97% reduction in gliadin content. This version of gluten-free wheat is removing about three-quarters of the gliadin genes,” Wager said.

It’s important to note that only 97% of the gliadin is being removed because anyone who is allergic to gluten could still experience a reaction. However, Wager points out, “It could be a great product for them, but that’s yet to be determined.” Everyone’s gluten intolerance is different and therefore their response to the remaining gliadin is unknown.

For those of us not allergic to gluten, we shouldn’t be concerned. Wager says normal bread eaters won’t be affected any differently. Instead you’ll have something resembling a flatbread in appearance and texture.

One thing Wager thought it was important to point out was that within wheat, “there are approximately 45 types of gliadin genes. What physiological effects will occur if we remove all 45 of them is not known. Physiological effects are the plant’s ability to fight off a disease or infection. If they continue to remove or de-activate all the gliadin, there will be a huge unknown impact on the wheat.”

What does this mean for those with celiac disease and gluten intolerance? Dr. Taylor explained there are other types of gluten-free options such as sourdough and heritage wheat.

“Heritage wheat is a term that I have seen used to describe wheat that is safe for celiac sufferers,” says Dr. Taylor. “It means the rather old wheat varieties, now called emmer and einkorn. These old varieties of wheat have less gluten than the regular bread wheat that is most typically used in today’s processed foods, but they still do have gluten.”

Even then, Dr. Taylor cautions that not all those with celiac would be able to tolerate it.

With sourdough, the slow lacto-fermentation process makes the bread (mostly) gluten free. This fermentation process also makes detecting any residual gluten more difficult, which has made the FDA slightly more reluctant to label sourdough as gluten free. Dr. Taylor gives us the example of gluten-free beer and how labeling it as so is somewhat of a risk. “There is evidence that some with celiac disease can tolerate sourdough,” Dr. Taylor says, but people with the disease should be cautious.

Either way, sourdough has a unique flavor and heritage wheat “definitely does not make great bread due to the lower gluten content” Dr. Taylor informs us.

Wager and Dr. Taylor agree that gluten-free wheat and bread probably won’t take over the market. The number of people allergic to gluten is a significantly smaller number compared to the number of people that are not allergic and the proteins with unique functional properties make gluten a rather important ingredient in foods. The experts also agree that while it is unclear when gluten-free wheat will hit markets, when it does, those truly allergic to gluten and suffering from celiac disease should treat it with caution.

“The allergic response to the remaining gliadin (gluten) is unknown and will depend on one’s gluten-intolerance,” Dr. Taylor said. “The biggest risk would be some people might be duped into believing that products are gluten free when they’re not.”

The FDA regulates the labeling of gluten-free products. He said labeling is a complex process. “In my view, FDA would be reluctant to grant permission to use gluten-free wheat on products made from heritage wheat or from sourdough-fermented products because FDA has not yet promulgated a final rule for use of gluten-free on fermented products,” he said. “That leaves genetically-engineered wheat. This form of gluten-free wheat might be okayed by FDA to be labeled as gluten-free.”

So is new gluten-free wheat a gamechanger?  Wager says that he “would not consider this a possible game changer, ” but he does believe that it could be the start of gene-editing products that could directly benefit us as consumers. Dr. Taylor considers this gene-edited wheat to be a potential game-changer, but that consumers may consider it a GMO, which might affect its acceptance.

Gluten-free wheat created through gene editing will not be on the market for some time, but it has endless market possibilities. The wheat may provide some benefit for those who are gluten intolerant or gluten sensitive. Maybe one day we’ll say, “I remember gluten bread.”

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