CRISPR: Foods of the Future
795 million people don’t have enough food to live healthy lives, 25,000 die every day from starvation, and we lose enough food to drought to feed 81 million people a year. Clearly, we have a problem.
Our current system for tackling starvation and hunger isn’t working, and going vegan won’t be able to fix everything. We need to leverage exponential technologies to fundamentally change the way we grow food.
Things making it tough for us to grow enough food:
- Extreme climate conditions like flash flooding, cold weather, and drought
- Food spoilage due to bacterial and fungal growth
- Decreasing nutrient levels in soil
- Pests eating away at crop yield
- Agriculture taking up about 1/3 of all usable land on Earth
Now, what if we were to think of a solution could tackle all of the issues listed above among many others? As you may have guessed by now, we can, using CRISPR, a revolutionary gene editing technology.
Gene Editing and CRISPR
Gene editing is centered around the premise of being able to modify the DNA of living things, which is what determines their physical attributes and tendencies. For humans, our DNA may decide our height or eye color, but when used in plants, we can change things like their nutritional value or resilience to drought conditions.
At the moment, the leading technology for actually going about gene editing is CRISPR, which stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. That’s definitely a bit of a mouthful, but in essence, it’s describing repeated bits of DNA which are used to defend our body against foreign bacteria.
The specific type of CRISPR that’s usually used is called “CRISPR-Cas9”, which can be used to cut up DNA and store it. Naturally, this is used to store copies of bacterial DNA to recognize it if the body is re-infected, but scientists have figured out ways to harness CRISPR to remove and replace DNA in organisms. This can completely change various parts of an organism if specific genes are targeted, and can also be used to tackle genetic diseases.
Using CRISPR to Modify Food
Gene editing is cool and all, but it doesn’t matter unless it can make a difference. So what can we do with it?
Increasing Environmental Tolerance: By studying the genetic sequences of various crops that can survive in semi-arid conditions, scientists have been able to make mainstream staple crops drought-resistant. The gene works by encouraging the plant to close their stomata (pores) closed during the day, to prevent water loss. This is being used on staple crops such as corn and wheat today! It also allows for them to be grown in tougher climates, increasing food supply in dryer regions.
Pest/Bacterial Resistance: Just like humans, plants have their own immune systems, though typically less effective. Researchers have found genes in plants linked to disease resistance (R genes) and disease susceptibility (S genes) in plants, and are using CRISPR to maximize R genes while minimizing S genes. This has been demonstrated in plants such as rice, cacao, and even mushrooms. Currently, we lose 20–40% of our crops due to disease, and gene editing can reduce that number without needing pesticides or fungicides.
Longer Shelf Life: Making foods last longer is another area often explored, and it can help to reduce food waste in remote areas. One-third of all food produced is wasted, and gene editing may help with that. Certain fatty acids/sugar producing genes can be suppressed within plants such as soybeans and potatoes which can increase cold storage life and reduce spoilage.
Controversy Behind Gene Editing
Gene editing is not without its controversy, and a large part of it is due to stigma caused by GMOs, or genetically modified organisms. You’ve likely heard of GMOS before, and if not, then you’ve almost certainly eaten a product modified by them. Whether its tomatoes or bananas, almost all of our food supply is genetically modified.
GMOs involve inserting new foreign genes into plants, for example, a scientist could add a gene from a resilient grass to a typical corn plant, and hope that the corn is able to live through dry conditions. Inserting foreign DNA is subject to significant public backlash and controversy, especially in terms of ethics and potential harm to the body.
CRISPR editing uses a different system, where a plant’s base pairs, or natural DNA is modified, without adding any foreign components. DNA may be shuffled around, removed, or reproduced, but it still comes from the original plant. This system is much more precise, which minimizes the effect of unintended consequences.
To use an analogy, CRISPR’s pinpoint editing can be compared to a sniper, targeting specific locations to change; whereas GMO technology is like a bomb, covering a lot of area but still getting the job done.
There’s no significant evidence out there that shows harm caused by gene edited plants or GMOs, but if GMOs are safe, then CRISPR edited plants are safer. Since you won’t end up with any foreign components in the final product, there’s a lot less danger of unwanted mutations in the plant, or potential harm-causing substances being present.
Future Developments
A huge advantage to gene editing is that there isn’t too much regulation associated with CRISPR crops, because no foreign substances are being introduced, and it’s only dealing with a plant’s base pairs. This can really make a difference when it comes to quickly growing the industry and spreading a new generation of healthier and stronger food across the world.
As CRISPR technology progresses, and we’re able to read more and more of plants’ genes, we will be able to produce even better crops. Gene editing can significantly reduce the load we put on our planet for food production, by saving both space and the need to grow in excess.
Gene editing is just one of the many steps towards eliminating world hunger across the world, and while it is still being developed, it truly has the potential to impact billions…
Thank you for reading my article! If you have any feedback, suggestions, comments, or corrections, I’d love to hear them. Feel free to contact me through any of the social media below.
E-mail: vedaant.varshney@gmail.com
LinkedIn: Vedaant Varshney
Leave a response on Medium!
