Mitochondria produce energy from nutrients which is why they are often called the “powerhouses” of cells. These regions of a cell contain their own DNA, apart from the nuclear DNA of the rest of the cell. In animal cells, the mitochondrial DNA has a smaller and simpler genome, in plant cells, it’s the other way around. Because of that, it has been extremely difficult for scientists to edit plant genes and none have been able to until now. A team of Japanese researchers from the Universities of Tokyo, Tohoku, and Tamagawa, has managed to pull it off, which could help improve the genetic diversity of crops. The research was published in the journal Nature Plants.
Shin-ichi Arimura, lead researcher on the study, said:
The plant mitochondrial genome is huge in comparison, the structure is much more complicated, the genes are sometimes duplicated, the gene expression mechanisms are not well-understood, and some mitochondria have no genomes at all – in our previous studies, we observed that they fuse with other mitochondria to exchange protein products and then separate again.
In other words, mitochondrial DNA is unbelievably complex to try and work with. As useful as it would be to be able to genetically modify crops, the scientists are still just at the beginning of figuring it out. If crops were to be regularly genetically modified it could improve yields or make them hardier against disease and climate change, but without access to large sections of their DNA, genetic diversity is somewhat limited.
Arimura said:
We still have a big risk now because there are so few plant mitochondrial genomes used in the world. I would like to use our ability to manipulate plant mitochondrial DNA to add diversity.
How They Did It
To start with the team adapted a process used to edit mitochondrial DNA in animals. The process is called mitoTALENs. It is a technique that uses a protein to cut and delete a specific gene from the mitochondrial genome.
They used their modified version of the mitoTALENs technique to snip out a mitochondrial gene that’s thought to cause a condition called cytoplasmic male sterility (CMS), which leaves male plants infertile and unable to make pollen.
The method resulted in the creation of four new lines of rice and three new lines of canola – all of them appearing to be fertile, producing far more seeds than the unedited plants.
“We knew we were successful when we saw that the rice plant was more polite — it had a deep bow,” said Arimura, joking about how a fertile rice plant bends under the weight of heavy seeds.
Conclusion
The team says that the real benefit of the work is adding genetic diversity to crops, even more so than improving yields. The next phase of their research will involve going into identifying which other mitochondrial genes could be edited for this goal.
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