By Ben
Coxworth
January 30, 2020
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First author of the study
Coralie Salesse-Smith, alongside Prof. David Stern Jason Koski/Brand
Communications
VIEW 1 IMAGES
Led by Prof. David Stern,
researchers at New York state's Boyce Thompson Institute started by looking at a
naturally-occurring enzyme known as RuBisCO. Previous
research already indicated that when levels of the substance were increased
in plants, those plants grew larger and matured faster.
With that in mind, Stern's team
created a variety of corn that produced higher-than-normal amounts of the
enzyme. Alongside regular corn, those genetically-engineered plants were grown
for three weeks at a temperature of 25 ºC (77 ºF), after which the temperature
was lowered to 14 ºC (57 ºF) for two weeks, and then raised back to 25 degrees.
This was done in order to
simulate the chilling that occurs when corn crops are planted in the springtime,
and then subjected to a spell of cold weather. Ordinarily when this happens, the
plants' growth is set back considerably. By the time they recover, it may be too
late for them to reach maturity by the end of the growing season.
Such was not the case, however,
with the RuBisCO-rich corn. Compared to the control plants, it exhibited higher
rates of photosynthesis throughout the experiment. And after the chill, the
engineered plants recovered much quicker – this was due to the fact that they
experienced less damage to the molecules that carry out the photosynthesis
process. As a result, the new strain grew taller than the control plants, and
produced mature ears of corn faster.
The scientists are now working on
making the engineered corn even hardier.
"The corn we developed isn’t yet
completely optimized for chilling tolerance, so we are planning the next
generation of modifications," says Stern. "For example, it would be very
interesting to add a chilling-tolerant version of a protein called PPDK into the
corn and see if it performs even better."
A paper on the research was
recently published in Plant
Biotechnology Journal.
Source: New Atlas URL:
https://newatlas.com/biology/genetically-engineered-corn-cold-climates/Boyce
Thompson Institute