Science @beehaw.org abobla @lemm.ee 10 mo. ago

Researchers have successfully transferred a gene to produce tobacco plants that lack pollen and viable seeds, while otherwise growing normally

news.ncsu.edu No Pollen, No Seeds: Genome Editing Technique Yields Useful Traits

Tweaks to the mitochondrial genome hold the potential for better hybrid seed production or to introduce seedless fruits.

18 comments

For those of you wondering how this is useful, tobacco is often used as a model organism in botany. The utility of this technique is less obvious in tobacco but more obvious in fruits, vegetables, etc. think seedless grapes, etc
- Seedless grapes already exist, but I suppose you could now insert the gene into other plants/varieties to make those seedless as well.
  
  I'm thinking more about how big ag companies could use this to prevent farmers from saving seeds/propagating a copyrighted variety (though I don't know if that's common with any crops where the seed itself isn't the end product) or maybe more charitably, preventing their copyrighted plants from cross pollinating neighboring fields of the same species (e.g. ruining that neighbor's non-gmo status).
  
  Finally, this could be useful if it can be "switched on" i.e. by deliberately polluting an invasive plant's gene pool with this gene and then switching it on to stall the invasive's population growth. But I think most invasives are perennials, so would still need to be removed some other way.
  
  It could be used for improving products, but really it'll be DRM for plants. That's what could make money so that's why money was spent.
- Could you elaborate? It's interesting but I still don't understand why it's useful.
  
  I'd love to see a seedless watermelon. It'd be less of a hassle to eat them.
  
  So you've got seedless grapes, but say this one flavor of grapes you really like is seeded. Boom! Now you can make it seedless. We've got seedless oranges, but say you really like the taste of Valencia oranges (which are seeded). Boom! Now you've got seedless Valencias. And you go from there.
So now farmers will need a subscription to the seeds they need to grow crops? Instead of collecting seeds from their last crop? This will turn out well…
- So continuing the trend that already happens with corn.
- This is already the case. It is illegal to grow crops from unpurchased seed, you have to buy it every year.
  
  Fuck Monsanto.
Useful traits for terminator seeds?

On one hand if they don't cross-pollinate with regular crops thats probably a good thing?

On the other hand this sounds like it would produce crops that would make farmers even more restricted. Food security would be further throttled and controlled by agricultural corps.

Or maybe im reading this wrong, does anyone know of any more benign uses for this tech?
This sounds like it's weaponizable.

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