Spanish scientists ask Europe to allow the use of the 'genetic cut-paste' in crops
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Loading... - Liam Jones
- 07 Nov 2022
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Since humanity learned how to cultivate the land some 10,000 years ago, agricultural techniques have evolved exponentially: the introduction of the plow, crosses between plants as Mendel did with his famous peas, or the inclusion of new fertilizers or pesticides are just a few examples of how man has tried to control, increase and improve production ever since. Now, in the age of the genome, we have direct access to the DNA that writes life, and we have invented techniques that can somehow 'rewrite' it quickly and easily. However, the possible ethical implications derived from these practices have led to different legal obstacles, sometimes unfair.
At least that's how they think from the Confederation of Scientific Societies of Spain (Cosce) with respect to CRISPR-Cas , an innovative technique known as 'the genetic cut-paste', and that is assuming a revolution in science (not in vain, was the reason Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry). The organisation, which brings together 84 Spanish scientific societies and more than 40,000 researchers, has prepared a reportin which he asks Europe "urgently" to review the current regulation of Plant Breeding Techniques in the EU, in which CRISPR technology is equated with transgenics and makes its cultivation almost impossible due to enormous bureaucratic obstacles.
Imitating nature
Scientists argue that this legislation "is obsolete" and that it is not only they who say so, but that the European Court of Justice has recently recognized it in a ruling in 2018, where it urged to review the standard. They explain that the technique is based on a protection system naturally possessed by bacteria and archaea by which they incorporate small fragments of the genome of the viruses that attack them into a sort of 'internal library'. When an already stored virus reappears, they are able to 'cut' the viral DNA and thus prevent reinfection.
The discoverer of this mechanism was Francisco Mojica, a researcher at the University of Alicante and, precisely, one of the signatories of the aforementioned Cosce petition. Charpentier and Doudna found a way to apply it to other living beings and, from that moment on, it became a revolution: reproducing the strategy used by the CRISPR-Cas system to recognize and destroy viral DNA sequences , these tools allow marking with great accuracy specific regions of the DNA of any organism and produce a cut in both DNA strands. Later, this 'cut' is repaired by the organism's own cellular mechanisms, often causing small modifications in the original sequence of the gene. Read More…
