‘Holy grail’ wheat gene discovery could feed our overheated world | Climate crisis | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/07/holy-grail-wheat-gene-discovery-could-feed-our-overheated-world
This complexity has had important consequences. In order to control their differing genes and chromosomes, wheat has acquired a stabilising gene that segregates the different chromosomes in its various genomes. This has ensured these forms of wheat have high yields. However, the gene also suppresses any exchange of chromosomes with wild relatives of wheat, frustrating the efforts of geneticists trying to make new varieties with beneficial properties.
“Wild relatives have really useful characteristics – disease resistance, salt tolerance, protection against heat – attributes that you want to add to make wheat more robust and easy to grow in harsh conditions. But you couldn’t do that because this gene stopped these attributes from being assimilated.”
This gene was known as the “holy grail” of wheat geneticists, added Moore. “Wheat – despite its critical importance to feeding the world – has proved to be the most difficult of all the major crops to study because of the complexity and size of its genome. Hence, the importance of the search to find the gene that was the cause of this problem.”
It has taken several decades but scientists at the John Innes Centre have now succeeded in their hunt for their holy grail. They identified the key gene, labelled it Zip4.5B and have created a mutant version of it, one that allows the gene to carry out its main function – to allow wheat chromosomes to pair correctly and maintain yields – but which lacks its ability to block the creation of new variants with attributes from wild grasses.