3rd blog. Example Cisgenesis

Cisgenic apples

The generation of cisgenic crops is limited between apples, barleys and potatoes.

Cisgenesis is useful in apples because of the introduction a particular resistance gene that confers resistance to some diseases, for example to fire blight, which is caused by a Gram-negative bacterium Erwinia amylovora, one of the most important pome fruit pathogen worldwide.[2] However, the introduction of a resistance from a wild source takes between 20 to 50 years until a cultivar with fruit of marketable quality can be released. [1]

In Switzerland lots of tonnes of apples are produced annually, most of them generated by ‘’golden Delicious’’ and ‘’Gala’’. Due to the pathogen, lots of trees were eradicated and because of that the use of streptomycin started. However, some strains of that pathogen had become resistant to this antibiotic, and this is why genetic engineering is a good way as a second strategy to produce resistant fireblight apple trees.

Nowadays, there are three methods that have been successfully applied producing trees. One of them avoid the use of any source than the apple. Other one uses the excision of selectable marker genes, and the last is done by the use of T-DNAs. [3]

Literature:

[1] Kost, T.D., Gessler, C., Jänsch, M., Flachwosky, H., Patocchi, A., & Broggini, G. A. L. (2015) Development to the first cisgenic apple with increased resistance to fire blight. PLoS One; 10(12):e0143980.

[2] Gusberti, M., Klemm, U., Meier, M. S., Maurhofer, M. & Hunger-Glaser, I. (2015) fire blight control: the struggle goes on. A comparison of different fire blight control methods in Switzerland with respect to biosafety, efficacy and durability. Int J Environ Res Public Health; 12(9) : 11422-11447.

[3] Krens, F. A., Schaart, J. G., van der Burgh, A. M., Tinnenbroek-Capel, I. E. M, Groenwold, E., Kodde, L. P., Broggini, G. A. L., Gessler, C. & Schouten, H. J. (2015) Cisgenic apple trees; development, characteritzation and performance. Front Plant Sci; 6:286.