In the latest issue of the academic journal Science, IU Professor Roger Innes and a team of researchers within IU Bloomington’s Department of Biology describe how a minor alteration to an existing plant gene could set the stage for making future plants more resistant to a broad range of diseases.
This approach — which marks the first time a plant’s innate defense system has been altered to resist a new disease — is also the subject of a patent filing by the IU Research and Technology Corp. It includes not only diseases caused by viral and bacterial infections, but by fungal diseases and even nematode worms.
As crop diseases affect billions of people a year in terms of monetary and food supply loss, such a therapy — if successful — carries tremendous economic implications.
“Our results suggest this method, which involves a single, minor alteration to an existing gene, is broadly applicable to a wide swath of diseases affecting plants of economic importance.”
— Roger Innes, IU biology professor
For example, if Innes’ research is applicable to soybeans — something his team currently is studying — it could be a significant boon for what is currently the world’s sixth most common crop. Not to mention that in 2012, Indiana ranked second among U.S. states in soybean production, according to a report from the Indiana Business Research Center.
Read more about the work of Innes and his colleagues here, as well as this recent post on Gizmodo.com.
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