Blog 8: Engineering Crops and Combatting Climate Change with CRSIPR

Hey everyone, with exams coming to an end and summer break starting, I now have the time to start up the blog series again. And what better way to start off than picking up right where I left off with CRISPR. Except this time, instead of highlighting its positive impact on medicine, I’m going to focus on its impact on agriculture.

Over the last few blogs, we’ve looked into how CRISPR has impacted the world by giving scientists the ability to edit human DNA and put their progress towards curing genetic diseases. But what if I told you that CRISPR could also be applied to edit DNA in other organisms, impacting and maybe even saving our planet. 

By saving, I’m referring to the ever-increasing issue of climate change and its impact. Due to  rising global temperatures, our ecosystems have begun to collapse, resulting in the loss of valuable natural resources. This issue has caused scientists to look towards synthetic biology, and at the front of that is CRISPR. Let me explain.

Context on Climate Change:                                            

The climate change crisis is a complex one. For one, it's not just about the ice caps melting. It’s also about the food shortages, dying coral reefs, extreme weather, and rising carbon dioxide levels that are the problem. What makes it especially complex is that there isn’t a clear-cut issue to the problem…yet. Traditional solutions like reducing our fossil fuel use and planting trees will only reduce the damages done, but it won’t ever fix the problem. 

By editing the DNA of plants, microbes, and even insects, scientists can develop more efficient strategies to deal with the plethora of issues climate change presents. Instead of just slowing down the effects of climate change, CRISPR can work to stop it.

Gene-editing Crops:                                                    

Before I get into specific examples of how CRISPR can solve climate change, let me give you a breakdown of agriculture's impact on the current problem. Right now, agriculture accounts for a little over 10% of our global greenhouse gas emissions. The number 10% is made up of fertilizer use, methane produced by livestock, and land destruction. What makes this even more concerning is that a growing population means a growing demand for food. As more people need to be fed, agricultural production will have to increase and unless major changes are made, its share of global emissions will only continue to rise.

This is where CRISPR comes into play, as it offers a way to reprogram crops to use fewer resources while maintaining or even increasing yields. Using CRISPR, scientists can edit a plant’s genes to enhance its behavior in favor of us and against carbon emissions. For example, using CRISPR technology, scientists can remove growth-slowing genes so that plants can grow faster or survive stress, modify root systems so that plants can absorb water and nutrients more effectively, code plants to eliminate susceptibility to fungi or viruses, and so much more. 

The idea is not a hypothetical either. In fact, real, impactful changes have been made to plants in the past that have made them more reliable than they were previously. 

Example of CRISPR Being used to Improve Plants:   

One of the most powerful examples of this technology being applied to reduce resource consumption while increasing yields comes from Corteva Agriscience where, in 2019, they developed drought-tolerant corn. To do so, scientists had to edit a gene called ARGOS8, which helped the plant manage its stress hormones. As a result of this modification, the field trials in Nebraska and Kansas showed that the new corn performed 5% better during drought conditions than did the original corn. And although a change of 5% may seem small, a 5% difference spanned over millions of acres of land adds up. 

Apart from making plants more efficient during extreme conditions, another major issue tackled by this technology was water waste. Specifically, at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, Dr. Zachary Lippman and his team used CRISPR to reduce the number of tiny pores on tomato leaves called stomata. In removing the tiny stomata on tomato leaves, the upgraded fruit was able to retain more water and still produce the same full-sized fruit as before, potentially saving millions of gallons of water and proving to be a huge breakthrough for the field. 

Finally, moving away from resource management and back towards the overarching issue of climate change, there have been successful efforts to mitigate and stop the effects of climate change using CRISPR technology. The one that I will talk about today comes from a California-based startup called Living Carbon where in 2023, they began planting gene-edited poplar trees that grew faster and absorbed more carbon dioxide than normal trees do. To do this, the scientists looked into the tree’s natural photosynthesis process and decided to reduce the amount of lignin (a compound that slows decay in wood). This change allowed the trees to not only pull in more carbon dioxide from the air while they were alive but also store it longer in the soil after they died. Since it's still pretty recent, it's hard to see what the exact results were of these enhanced trees. Regardless, if successful, these trees could be a gamechanger in combating the growing problem of climate change. 

Conclusion and Wrap-Up:

What I hope you got from today is that CRISPR can be applied to have a game changing impact across multiple fields. Even more importantly, it can potentially solve the issue of climate change. 

I believe that this technology can truly put a stop to climate change if used properly. I mean, even with all of the great things it has done for us, the possibilities for what this technology can do are only growing. 

Whether you’re interested in science, the environment, or hopefully the future of our planet, CRISPR is something that would be worth looking into, especially with all of its potential. Anyway, that’s all I have for today, feels good to be back.

Thanks for reading

— Aidan Kincaid

P.S. sorry for the formatting issues, I ran into some problems on my main computer and had to get this blog posted from a different device.