{"id":18571,"date":"2013-01-14T09:56:40","date_gmt":"2013-01-14T14:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=18571"},"modified":"2013-01-14T09:56:40","modified_gmt":"2013-01-14T14:56:40","slug":"the-increasing-precision-of-dna-editing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/01\/14\/the-increasing-precision-of-dna-editing\/","title":{"rendered":"The increasing precision of DNA editing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rationaloptimist.com\/blog\/precision-editing-of-dna.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">Matt Ridley<\/a> looks at the vastly improved editing tools becoming available for DNA manipulation:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Little wonder that precision genetic engineering has taken a while to arrive. In truth, it has been moving steadily toward greater precision for 10,000 years. Early farmers in what&#8217;s now Turkey introduced a mutation to wheat plants in the &#8220;Q gene&#8221; on chromosome 5A, which made the seed-head less brittle and the seed husks easier to harvest efficiently.<\/p>\n<p>They did so unknowingly, of course, by selecting from among random mutations.<\/p>\n<p>Fifty years ago, scientists used a nuclear reactor to fire gamma rays at barley seeds, scrambling some of their genes. The result was &#8220;Golden Promise,&#8221; a high-yielding, low-sodium barley variety popular with (ironically) organic farmers and brewers. Again, the gene editing was random, the selection afterward nonrandom.<\/p>\n<p>Twenty years ago, scientists inserted specific sequences for four enzymes into rice plants so that they would synthesize vitamin A and relieve a deadly vitamin deficiency-the result being &#8220;golden rice.&#8221; This time the researchers knew exactly what letters they were putting in but had no idea where they would end up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Matt Ridley looks at the vastly improved editing tools becoming available for DNA manipulation: Little wonder that precision genetic engineering has taken a while to arrive. In truth, it has been moving steadily toward greater precision for 10,000 years. Early farmers in what&#8217;s now Turkey introduced a mutation to wheat plants in the &#8220;Q gene&#8221; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[74,16,15],"tags":[183,827,513],"class_list":["post-18571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-science","category-technology","tag-dna","tag-genetics","tag-research"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4Px","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18571"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18572,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18571\/revisions\/18572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}