Bypassing Tissue Culture in Wheat Base Editing! 🌾⚡ Barley Stripe Mosaic Virus (BSMV-BE) Delivers Heritable Base Edits in Hexaploid Wheat! Researchers engineer BSMV to deliver sgRNAs into stable CBE/ABE-expressing wheat lines, unlocking tissue-culture-free, heritable base editing! 🎯🧬 Key Breakthrough Highlights: 📦 BSMV-BE Vector Engineering: Inserted sgRNAs downstream of the γb stop codon in BSMV RNAγ, confirming compatibility with both CBE (hA3A-nCas9-UGI) and ABE (ABE8e-nCas9). 🍃 High Somatic Efficiency: Mechanical sap inoculation achieved up to 87.7% somatic CBE editing (TaMTL) and 40.0% ABE editing (TaALS-G631) in hexaploid wheat. 🌾 Virus-Free Heritable Transmission: M1 offspring transmitted edits without viral persistence, achieving heritable efficiencies of 30.2% (TaMTL) and 28.8% (TaGASR7). 🛡️ Herbicide Resistance Trait: Target editing at TaALS-P174 produced M2 wheat plants with robust resistance to nicosulfuron herbicide! A game-changing framework for monocot functional genomics and precision crop breeding! 🚀🌟 doi.org/10.1016/j.xplc.2026.… #WheatGenomics #BaseEditing #BSMV #CRISPR #CropEngineering #AgBiotech

Bypassing CRISPR Patent Restrictions in Crops! 🌿⚡ Cuong X. Nguyen’s Team at VAST Deploys AI-Designed OpenCRISPR-1 in Dicot Plants on bioRxiv! Published on bioRxiv (Aug 28, 2026): Open-source AI nuclease delivers SpCas9-equivalent editing yields in soybean and tobacco without commercial IP bottlenecks! 🎯🌱 Key Engineering Benchmarks: 🛠️ Plant-Optimized OpenCRISPR-1 Vector (pBSE-OpenCRISPR-1): Engineered with dual NLS signals (3xFLAG-NLS N-term, NLS C-term) under the soybean GmUBQ promoter and AtU6-26 sgRNA driver targeting standard 5’-NGG-3’PAMs. 🫘 49.55% Soybean Hairy Root Edit Rate: Targeted fatty acid desaturase GmFAD2-1B, achieving a 49.55% total mutation rate via Oxford Nanopore sequencing. 🚬 75% T0 Editing Yield in Tobacco: Leaf disc transformation targeting NbPDSa/b yielded editing in 27/36 T0 plants, with 13.8% achieving complete homozygous/biallelic knockout (Line 26 fully albino). ✂️ Classic Cas9 Cleavage Pattern: Cleavage mapped precisely 2–3 nt upstream of NGG PAM, proving AI-generated nucleases perform identically to natural Cas9 enzymes in plant cells. Democratizing precision gene editing for global crop improvement! 🚀🌟 doi.org/10.64898/2026.08.27.… #OpenCRISPR #PlantGenomics #SoybeanEditing #CRISPR #bioRxiv2026 #AgBiotech