LIKE ANY SELF-RESPECTING farmer, Zachary Lippman was grumbling about the weather. Stout, with close-cropped hair and beard, Lippman was standing in a greenhouse in the middle of Long Island, surrounded by a profusion of rambunctiously bushy plants. โDonโt get me started,โ he said, referring to the late and inclement spring.
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ALTHOUGH HE WORKEDย on a farm as a teenager and has a romantic attachment to the soil, ยญLippman isnโt a farmer. Heโs a plant biologist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York with an expertise in genetics and development. And these greenhouse plants arenโt ordinary tomatoes.
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What makes this greenhouse differentโwhat makes it arguably an epicenter of a revolution in plant biology that may forever change not just the future of the tomato but the future of many cropsโis that 90 percent of the tomato plants in the building had been genetically altered using theย wizardly new gene-editing toolย known as Crispr/Cas-9.
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Huge questions vex the future of foodโhow to feed 9 billion mouths, how to farm in an era of unprecedented climate uncertainty, how to create more resilient and nutritious foods for a public wary of the new technology. Plant scientists are already using Crispr and related technologies to reshape food crops in dramatic ways…
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In both industrial and academic labs, new editing tools are being developed that will have a profound impact on the foods all of us eat.
Read full, original article:ย Crispr Can Speed Up Natureโand Change How We Grow Foodย (Paywall after two free articles)
