Botanics on Steroids: How to Create Customized Plants with Gene Editing
Who wouldn’t want a tree that looks like that? I’d want it, but here’s the catch: it doesn’t exist, well not in this form. It exists as two different species: a willow tree and a Rustacean Cyridina Serrata (a sea shrimp).
In the picture, the tree uses bioluminescence, a form of chemiluminescence, to generate and emit light, just like the sea shrimp. So we want the functionality of a shrimp and the structure of a willow tree. Thanks to gene editing, we can identify and combine these attributes. But how?
The Biological Basis of Gene Editing
An organism’s genes are stored in every single one of its cells, inside the nucleus (the brain) of the cell.
By genes, I mean DNA, which is a double helix structure (out of sugar-phosphate) that stores four distinct proteins: Adenine Cytosine Thymine Guanine. A’s bind with T and C’s with G’s.
I think of it as 1s and 0s in a computer program. But how do we edit this thing?
CRISPR and how gene editing works
CRISPR is a gene-editing method inspired by the immune system of bacteria.
Cas9 is a part of proteins found in the immune system of a bacteria which is used against viruses. The bacteria edits it’s genes after acquiring a virus to not allow that virus in again.
RNA means half of DNA.
We can now edit the genes of the willow tree to biollumminate.
A smart idea (if you don’t want the tree to have other qualities of a shrimp) would be to inspect the genes of other bioluminescent organisms and finding a group of genes that are only related to that quality. Then changing those genes in the willow tree.
Gene editing will completely disrupt the Botanics industry, allowing people to customize and add new features to their plants.
Key Takeaways
- It is possible to inject the qualities of an organism to another organism.
- Gene editing will have an enormous effect on many industries. (Comment them below :)
