Heard of CRISPR gene editing but not sure what it is? 🌱🧬

[Music] heard of crispy gene editing but not sure what it is [Music] it's one of the many ways we can use mutations to develop better plants for our food mutations are happening all the time in us microbes animals and plants inside every organism there is dna made up from molecules called bases a c g t forming a genetic sequence changes in this genetic sequence are mutations to put these mutations into perspective [Music] if we printed out the genetic sequence of wheat plant on a4 paper in font size nine and stacked it up could be as tall as the shard in london in the case of wheat a single wheat cell will contain on average 90 mutations that differ from the mother plant's genetic sequence this means even with the same variety there is genetic variation we have mutations to thank for the plants means our ancestors selected plants with mutations that were useful for food for example growing bigger or tasting better in brassica plants mutations in one wild relative have given us the variation we see in broccoli brussels sprouts kale cabbage colerabi cauliflower in traditional plant breeding desired traits are identified in two separate plants in the same species these are bred to combine these traits together in a new variety [Music] another way is mutation breeding developed in the 20th century seeds are exposed to chemicals or radiation to promote random mutations in their dna this breeding method has been used in many cereal fruit and vegetable crops for example many varieties of barley used to make beer were created this way but the problem with these methods is that it takes a long time to find the mutation you are looking for as many random mutations are introduced crispr is a new plant-breeding method that mimics a process that happens naturally in microbes there are two components of the crispr system the search part guide rna and cas9 the guide rna searches for the dna sequence [Music] and cas9 cuts the dna after the crispr cas9 system has cut the dna in a precise location the plant naturally repairs itself most of the time successfully but occasionally the plant makes a mistake in its repair generating a mutation the useful thing about crispr is that we can target where the mutation will be instead of it being random rather than randomly mutating dna with chemicals or radiation cas9 makes cuts in a precise location the mutation is identical to a mutation that could have happened in a scene or been added by mutation breathing but there is only one mutation instead of many using gene editing tools such as crispr offers the potential to speed up parts of the breathing process from the eight to fifteen years it kindly takes with traditional anti-mutation breeding to just a few years so that's how crispr gene editing works and how it compares to the ways we've been breeding plants before [Music] with the climate emergency plant breeders are facing increasing pressures to grow more food sustainably crispr gene editing is one way among others that we can do this you

Channel: John Innes Centre

Views: 2,015

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: SXkAYabMRAk

Length: 4min 44sec (284 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 06 2021