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Towards responsible communication of agricultural biotechnology research for the common good

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology volume 22, pages 301–302 (2021)Cite this article

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Lack of critical assessment and responsible reporting of proof-of-concept agricultural biotechnologies such as CRISPR–Cas can delay innovation, jeopardize public trust and waste resources, especially in the Global South. In this commentary, we propose solutions to facilitate a more responsible innovation pipeline and to realize the potential of biotechnology in agriculture.

The discovery and characterization of CRISPR–Cas as a highly modular system enabling sequence-specific DNA binding and manipulation has enabled a wide range of novel applications in agricultural biotechnology. Since the publication of pioneering work in 2012 describing an engineered CRISPR–Cas9 system to cleave target DNA sequences, preliminary studies have demonstrated, with varying degrees of scientific robustness, a wide potential for CRISPR–Cas-derived systems in agriculture. For example, scientists have shown that CRISPR–Cas9 could be used as an orthologous system to engineer resistance against DNA viruses1. Although such an approach appeared very attractive owing to its orthogonality and the hypothesized difficulty of viruses to circumvent or break such engineered resistance, limited attention has been paid to the critical assessments identified significant limitations of and risks in using this system2.

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Acknowledgements

D.M. and H.V would like to thank their collaborators in the Global South for fruitful discussions and debates. H.V. also acknowledges support from FNRS (grants F.4515.17 and J.0187.21) and LEAP-Agri (grant 288).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Plant Genomics, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

    Devang Mehta

  2. Laboratory of Tropical Crop Improvement, Division of Crop Biotechnics, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Hervé Vanderschuren

  3. Plant Genetics Laboratory, TERRA Teaching and Research Center, Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech, University of Liège, Gembloux, Belgium

    Hervé Vanderschuren

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  1. Devang Mehta
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Correspondence to Devang Mehta or Hervé Vanderschuren.

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Mehta, D., Vanderschuren, H. Towards responsible communication of agricultural biotechnology research for the common good. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 22, 301–302 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41580-021-00343-z

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