A fresh wave of gene-editing therapies is surging to the fore ' even as the field wrestles with the challenge of getting the first generation of expensive and complex CRISPR treatments to the people who need them....
In 2025, we will see AI and machine learning begin to amplify the impact of Crispr genome editing in medicine, agriculture, climate change, and the basic research that underpins these fields. It's worth saying upfront that the field of AI is awash with big promises like this. With any major new technological advance there is always a hype cycle, and we are in one now. In many cases, the benefits of AI lie some years in the future, but in genomics and life science research we are seeing real impacts right now. In my field, Crispr gene editing and genomics more broadly, we often deal with enormous datasets'or, in many cases, we can't deal with them properly because we simply don't have the tools or the time. Supercomputers can take weeks to months to analyze subsets of data for a given question, so we have to be highly selective about which questions we choose to ask. AI and machine learning are already removing these limitations, and we are using AI tools to quickly search and make discoveries in our large genomic datasets....
Rotten tomatoes no more: growing sweeter tomatoes is possible by editing just two of the fruit's genes. Deleting the genes increased the engineered fruits' glucose and fructose levels by up to 30% over mass-produced tomatoes, according to a study1 published today in Nature. Better yet, the gene-edited tomatoes weigh roughly the same as those sold now, and the plants produce as much fruit as do current varieties. These findings could not only help to improve tomatoes worldwide but are also an important step forward in understanding how fruits produce and store sugar, the authors write. This study is 'great and significant in its field and beyond', says Christophe Rothan, a fruit biologist at the French National Institute of Agricultural Research in Paris, who was not involved in the study. It raises the 'possibility of using the great genetic diversity existing in wild species, which has been partially lost in domesticated varieties, to improve modern varieties', he says. More than 186 million tonnes of tomatoes are produced globally each year, making the fruit one of the most valuable horticultural crops in the world. Like other crops, tomatoes have been domesticated by selecting for traits that reflect human preference ' such as fruit size. Cultivated tomatoes today are up to 100 times larger than their wild ancestors, helping to boost how much fruit each plant produces....
The global rise in antibiotic resistance is making bacterial infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness, and death. Once considered miracle drugs, antibiotics are now losing their effectiveness against ever-evolving bacteria. One company is aiming to treat infections with a different strategy: arming tiny viruses called bacteriophages with Crispr. Known as phages for short, these viruses naturally infect and kill bacteria. Locus Biosciences of North Carolina is adding the gene-editing tool Crispr to the phages' armory to boost their killing ability. The company is testing the approach against urinary tract infections, or UTIs, caused by E. coli bacteria. Results from a small trial published in August suggest the experimental treatment has promise, but larger studies will be needed to confirm its benefits. Phages exist everywhere that bacteria do, including sewers and soil, and there are thousands of different types. Whereas antibiotics kill bacteria indiscriminately'including the beneficial kind'phages have evolved to be selective in the strains or species of bacteria they target. This makes them an attractive alternative for treating infections....
