Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 9 March 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

CRISPR-Cas9 Gene Editing: Discussion

Dr. Raghuram Badmi:

As Dr. McLoughlin mentioned, we can use CRISPR to insert entire genes, but what we are seeing with SDN-1 and SDN-2 are precise changes. They do not insert or delete genes. Rather, we are targeting just a few letters among a billion base pairs.

My project involves identifying certain genes that can make strawberries resistant to diseases. Making those changes in the strawberry plant could just involve a couple of letters in its entire genome. We can see great results with this approach. Other countries have done this.