‘Editing’ tobacco to combat addiction

Low-nicotine gene-edited tobacco may be able to help combat nicotine addiction, according to a study by researchers from the Technical University of Dortmund, Germany, that was published in Plant Biotechnology

The researchers adopted CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) technology to disable six enzymes that are involved in the production of nicotine in the tobacco plant.

“We started the research three years ago,” said Julia Schachtsiek. “We just wondered why no real no-nicotine tobacco plant was available and not much was known regarding nicotine reduction. It would be interesting to see if the same results can be obtained with tobacco varieties used commercially in the tobacco industry to get nicotine-free cigarettes on the market.”

Low-nicotine gene-edited tobacco may be able to help combat nicotine addiction, according to a study by researchers from the Technical University of Dortmund, Germany, that was published in Plant Biotechnology

The researchers adopted CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) technology to disable six enzymes that are involved in the production of nicotine in the tobacco plant.

“We started the research three years ago,” said Julia Schachtsiek. “We just wondered why no real no-nicotine tobacco plant was available and not much was known regarding nicotine reduction. It would be interesting to see if the same results can be obtained with tobacco varieties used commercially in the tobacco industry to get nicotine-free cigarettes on the market.”