The “holy grail of crop science,” according to Dr. Peoples, would be a tool that could identify three or four genetic changes that would double crop production for whatever you’re growing.
With CRISPR, those changes could be made right now. However, there needs to be a way to identify those changes, and that information is buried in the massive databases.
To develop the tool that can dig them out, Dr. Peoples’ team merged artificial intelligence with synthetic biology, a field of science that involves redesigning organisms to have useful new abilities, such as increasing crop yield or bioplastic production.
This union created Gene Ranking Artificial Intelligence Network (GRAIN), an algorithm that evaluates scientific databases like GenBank and identifies genes that act at a fundamental level in crop metabolism.
That “fundamental level” aspect is one of the keys to GRAIN’s long-term success. It identifies genes that are common across multiple crop types, so when a powerful gene is identified, it can be used across multiple crop types.
For example, using the GRAIN platform, Dr. Peoples and his team identified four genes that may significantly impact seed oil content in Camelina, a plant similar to rapeseed (true canola oil). When the researchers increased the activity of just one of those genes via CRISPR, the plants had a 10% increase in seed oil content.
It’s not quite a miracle yet, but with more advances in gene editing and AI happening all the time, the promises of the genetic revolution are finally starting to pay off.
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