Changes Upstream: RIPE team uses CRISPR/Cas9 to alter photosynthesis for the first time.

A team from the University of California, Berkeley has successfully used CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing to increase gene expression and photosynthetic activity in a food crop. This is the first study to use an unbiased gene-editing approach to enhance gene expression. The researchers focused on changing the expression of native genes in plants without introducing foreign DNA. The study found that inversions of regulatory DNA resulted in increased gene expression, and the approach did not compromise the activity of other essential processes. While this method is still relatively rare, it shows promise for improving crop traits and could potentially be faster than traditional plant breeding approaches. [Extracted from the article]