International audience ; On 5 June this year the first field trial of a CRISPR-Cas-9 gene-edited crop began at Rothamsted Research in the UK, having been approved by the UK Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs. However, in late July 2018, after the trial had started, the European Court of Justice ruled that techniques such as gene editing fall within the European Union's 2001 GMO directive, meaning that our gene-edited Camelina plants should be considered as genetically modified (GM). Here we describe our experience of running this trial and the legal transformation of our plants. We also consider the future of European plant research using gene-editing techniques, which now fall under the burden of GM regulation, and how this will likely impede translation of publicly funded basic research.
International audience ; On 5 June this year the first field trial of a CRISPR-Cas-9 gene-edited crop began at Rothamsted Research in the UK, having been approved by the UK Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs. However, in late July 2018, after the trial had started, the European Court of Justice ruled that techniques such as gene editing fall within the European Union's 2001 GMO directive, meaning that our gene-edited Camelina plants should be considered as genetically modified (GM). Here we describe our experience of running this trial and the legal transformation of our plants. We also consider the future of European plant research using gene-editing techniques, which now fall under the burden of GM regulation, and how this will likely impede translation of publicly funded basic research.
International audience ; On 5 June this year the first field trial of a CRISPR-Cas-9 gene-edited crop began at Rothamsted Research in the UK, having been approved by the UK Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs. However, in late July 2018, after the trial had started, the European Court of Justice ruled that techniques such as gene editing fall within the European Union's 2001 GMO directive, meaning that our gene-edited Camelina plants should be considered as genetically modified (GM). Here we describe our experience of running this trial and the legal transformation of our plants. We also consider the future of European plant research using gene-editing techniques, which now fall under the burden of GM regulation, and how this will likely impede translation of publicly funded basic research.
23 pags., 6 figs. ; Endoplasmic reticulum–plasma membrane contact sites (ER–PM CS) play fundamental roles in all eukaryotic cells. Arabidopsis thaliana mutants lacking the ER–PM protein tether synaptotagmin1 (SYT1) exhibit decreased PM integrity under multiple abiotic stresses, such as freezing, high salt, osmotic stress, and mechanical damage. Here, we show that, together with SYT1, the stress-induced SYT3 is an ER–PM tether that also functions in maintaining PM integrity. The ER–PM CS localization of SYT1 and SYT3 is dependent on PM phosphatidylinositol-4-phosphate and is regulated by abiotic stress. Lipidomic analysis revealed that cold stress increased the accumulation of diacylglycerol at the PM in a syt1/3 double mutant relative to wild-type while the levels of most glycerolipid species remain unchanged. In addition, the SYT1-green fluorescent protein fusion preferentially binds diacylglycerol in vivo with little affinity for polar glycerolipids. Our work ; This work was supported by the Ministerio de Economıa y Competitividad, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (grant no. BIO2017-82609-R to M.A.B.), the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades (grant no. PGC2018-098789-B-I00 to N.R.-L.) UMA-FEDER (grant UMA18-FEDERJA-154 to N.R.-L.), and the Marie SkłodowskaCurie actions (grant no. H2020-655366-IIF- PLICO to M.A.B. and N.R.-L.). N.R.L. was supported by the Ramon y Cajal program RYC-2013-12699 (MINECO, Spain). J.P.-S. and S.G.-H. were funded by the Ministerio de Economıa y Competitividad in Formacion del Personal Investigador Fellowship (grant no. BES-2012-052324) and (PRE2018- 085284), respectively. R.P.H. and J.A.N. received support from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC, UK) in the form of an Institute Strategic Programme Grant (grant no. BBS/E/C/000I0420). J.L. is supported by the Program of Introducing Talents of Discipline to Universities (111 Project, grant no. B13007). A.P.M. and J.P.-S. were supported by the Shanghai Center for Plant Stress Biology (Chinese Academy of Sciences), Chinese 1000 Talents Program. A.R. was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERCDiscovery Grant no. RGPIN-2019-05568). Support was also provided by AEI/FEDER, UE (grant nos. BIO2016-79187-R and PID2019-106987RB-I00 to J.P.-S.) and by the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (grant no. FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement no. 742985 to J.F. and T-Rex (project number 682436 to D.V.D.).
Horizon scanning is intended to identify the opportunities and threats associated with technological, regulatory and social change. In 2017 some of the present authors conducted a horizon scan for bioengineering (Wintle et al., 2017). Here we report the results of a new horizon scan that is based on inputs from a larger and more international group of 38 participants. The final list of 20 issues includes topics spanning from the political (the regulation of genomic data, increased philanthropic funding and malicious uses of neurochemicals) to the environmental (crops for changing climates and agricultural gene drives). The early identification of such issues is relevant to researchers, policy-makers and the wider public.
Horizon scanning is intended to identify the opportunities and threats associated with technological, regulatory and social change. In 2017 some of the present authors conducted a horizon scan for bioengineering (Wintle et al., 2017). Here we report the results of a new horizon scan that is based on inputs from a larger and more international group of 38 participants. The final list of 20 issues includes topics spanning from the political (the regulation of genomic data, increased philanthropic funding and malicious uses of neurochemicals) to the environmental (crops for changing climates and agricultural gene drives). The early identification of such issues is relevant to researchers, policy-makers and the wider public.
