Can gene-editing technology CRISPR create new crops that help fight climate change as they grow? That’s what a group of researchers hopes to do with

How CRISPR rice could help tackle climate change

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2022-06-23 06:00:10

Can gene-editing technology CRISPR create new crops that help fight climate change as they grow? That’s what a group of researchers hopes to do with $11 million in funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The funding will go toward efforts to enhance plants — starting with rice — and soil so that they’re better at trapping carbon dioxide. The effort, which was announced last week, is being led by the Innovative Genomics Institute, which was founded by Nobel laureate and co-inventor of CRISPR Jennifer Doudna.

“[Jennifer] and I saw eye to eye on climate and how big of a problem it is in the world. And we just didn’t want to sit on the sidelines anymore,” says Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) executive director Brad Ringeisen.

Climate experts overwhelmingly agree that the only way to truly tackle climate change is to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions we’re sending into the air as we burn fossil fuels to generate electricity or power trains, planes, and cars. But humans have already dumped so much planet-heating pollution in the atmosphere that we also need to find ways to clean up some of the existing mess and prevent even more catastrophic climate change. One way to accomplish that is through plants. Plants naturally take in a common greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, during photosynthesis. Eventually, they transfer that carbon into the soil.

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