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Evidence from four studies suggests that the moral opposition toward genetically modified (GM) foods impedes the perception of their benefits, and critically, marketers can circumvent this moral opposition by employing subtle cues to position these products as being \"man-made.\" Specifically, if consumers view the GM food as man-made, and if they understand why it was created, moral opposition to the product diminishes, and the GM food's perceived benefits increase, which subsequently increases purchase intentions for the product. This effect is replicated in the field (in both controlled and naturalistic settings), in a laboratory experiment, and with an online consumer panel. The results suggest that marketers can help consumers better consider all information when assessing the merits of GM foods by using packaging and promotion strategies to cue consumers to view the GM food for what it is (i.e., a man-made object created with intent). The findings have implications for the recent GM food labeling debate.

The diversity, modularity, and efficacy of CRISPR-Cas systems are driving a biotechnological revolution. RNA-guided Cas enzymes have been adopted as tools to manipulate the genomes of cultured cells, animals, and plants, accelerating the pace of fundamental research and enabling clinical and agricultural breakthroughs. We describe the basic mechanisms that set the CRISPR-Cas toolkit apart from other programmable gene-editing technologies, highlighting the diverse and naturally evolved systems now functionalized as biotechnologies. We discuss the rapidly evolving landscape of CRISPR-Cas applications, from gene editing to transcriptional regulation, imaging, and diagnostics. Continuing functional dissection and an expanding landscape of applications position CRISPR-Cas tools at the cutting edge of nucleic acid manipulation that is rewriting biology.

CRISPR–Cas genetic engineering of plants holds tremendous potential for providing food security, battling biotic and abiotic crop stresses caused by climate change, and for environmental remediation and sustainability. Since the discovery of CRISPR–Cas technology, its usefulness has been demonstrated widely, including for genome editing in plants. Despite the revolutionary nature of genome-editing tools and the notable progress that these tools have enabled in plant genetic engineering, there remain many challenges for CRISPR applications in plant biotechnology. Nanomaterials could address some of the most critical challenges of CRISPR genome editing in plants through improvements in cargo delivery, species independence, germline transformation and gene editing efficiency. This Perspective identifies major barriers preventing CRISPR-mediated plant genetic engineering from reaching its full potential, and discusses ways that nanoparticle technologies can lower or eliminate these barriers. We also describe advances that are needed in nanotechnology to facilitate and accelerate plant genome editing. Timely advancement of the application of CRISPR technologies in plant engineering is crucial for our ability to feed and sustain the growing human population under a changing global climate. Despite its high promise, there are still many challenges for CRISPR-mediated plant genetic engineering, yet nanotechnology can play an important role in lowering and possibly eliminating these challenges.

Pseudomonas putida is a Gram-negative, rod-shaped bacterium that can be encountered in diverse ecological habitats. This ubiquity is traced to its remarkably versatile metabolism, adapted to withstand physicochemical stress, and the capacity to thrive in harsh environments. Owing to these characteristics, there is a growing interest in this microbe for industrial use, and the corresponding research has made rapid progress in recent years. Hereby, strong drivers are the exploitation of cheap renewable feedstocks and waste streams to produce value-added chemicals and the steady progress in genetic strain engineering and systems biology understanding of this bacterium. Here, we summarize the recent advances and prospects in genetic engineering, systems and synthetic biology, and applications of P. putida as a cell factory.Key points• Pseudomonas putida advances to a global industrial cell factory.• Novel tools enable system-wide understanding and streamlined genomic engineering.• Applications of P. putida range from bioeconomy chemicals to biosynthetic drugs.

Cannabis sativa L. has been cultivated and used around the globe for its medicinal properties for millennia 1 . Some cannabinoids, the hallmark constituents of Cannabis , and their analogues have been investigated extensively for their potential medical applications 2 . Certain cannabinoid formulations have been approved as prescription drugs in several countries for the treatment of a range of human ailments 3 . However, the study and medicinal use of cannabinoids has been hampered by the legal scheduling of Cannabis , the low in planta abundances of nearly all of the dozens of known cannabinoids 4 , and their structural complexity, which limits bulk chemical synthesis. Here we report the complete biosynthesis of the major cannabinoids cannabigerolic acid, Δ 9 -tetrahydrocannabinolic acid, cannabidiolic acid, Δ 9 -tetrahydrocannabivarinic acid and cannabidivarinic acid in Saccharomyces cerevisiae , from the simple sugar galactose. To accomplish this, we engineered the native mevalonate pathway to provide a high flux of geranyl pyrophosphate and introduced a heterologous, multi-organism-derived hexanoyl-CoA biosynthetic pathway 5 . We also introduced the Cannabis genes that encode the enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of olivetolic acid 6 , as well as the gene for a previously undiscovered enzyme with geranylpyrophosphate:olivetolate geranyltransferase activity and the genes for corresponding cannabinoid synthases 7 , 8 . Furthermore, we established a biosynthetic approach that harnessed the promiscuity of several pathway genes to produce cannabinoid analogues. Feeding different fatty acids to our engineered strains yielded cannabinoid analogues with modifications in the part of the molecule that is known to alter receptor binding affinity and potency 9 . We also demonstrated that our biological system could be complemented by simple synthetic chemistry to further expand the accessible chemical space. Our work presents a platform for the production of natural and unnatural cannabinoids that will allow for more rigorous study of these compounds and could be used in the development of treatments for a variety of human health problems. Genetic engineering of yeast enables the production of cannabinoids and cannabinoid analogues from the simple sugar galactose, without the need to cultivate Cannabis .

Genetic engineering of plants is at the core of sustainability efforts, natural product synthesis and crop engineering. The plant cell wall is a barrier that limits the ease and throughput of exogenous biomolecule delivery to plants. Current delivery methods either suffer from host-range limitations, low transformation efficiencies, tissue damage or unavoidable DNA integration into the host genome. Here, we demonstrate efficient diffusion-based biomolecule delivery into intact plants of several species with pristine and chemically functionalized high aspect ratio nanomaterials. Efficient DNA delivery and strong protein expression without transgene integration is accomplished in Nicotiana benthamiana (Nb), Eruca sativa (arugula), Triticum aestivum (wheat) and Gossypium hirsutum (cotton) leaves and arugula protoplasts. We find that nanomaterials not only facilitate biomolecule transport into plant cells but also protect polynucleotides from nuclease degradation. Our work provides a tool for species-independent and passive delivery of genetic material, without transgene integration, into plant cells for diverse biotechnology applications.High aspect ratio nanomaterials enable efficient delivery of DNA into mature plant cells in a species-independent and non-integrating manner for plant genetic engineering applications.

Plant genetic engineering is an important tool used in current efforts in crop improvement, pharmaceutical product biosynthesis and sustainable agriculture. However, conventional genetic engineering techniques target the nuclear genome, prompting concerns about the proliferation of foreign genes to weedy relatives. Chloroplast transformation does not have this limitation, since the plastid genome is maternally inherited in most plants, motivating the need for organelle-specific and selective nanocarriers. Here, we rationally designed chitosan-complexed single-walled carbon nanotubes, utilizing the lipid exchange envelope penetration mechanism. The single-walled carbon nanotubes selectively deliver plasmid DNA to chloroplasts of different plant species without external biolistic or chemical aid. We demonstrate chloroplast-targeted transgene delivery and transient expression in mature Eruca sativa, Nasturtium officinale, Nicotiana tabacum and Spinacia oleracea plants and in isolated Arabidopsis thaliana mesophyll protoplasts. This nanoparticle-mediated chloroplast transgene delivery tool provides practical advantages over current delivery techniques as a potential transformation method for mature plants to benefit plant bioengineering and biological studies.Chitosan-functionalized single-walled carbon nanotubes enable selective gene delivery to the chloroplasts of mature living plants without external mechanical aid.

The changing climate scenarios harshen the biotic stresses including boosting up the population of insect/pest and disease, uplifting weed growth, declining soil beneficial microbes, threaten pollinator, and boosting up abiotic stresses including harsh drought/waterlogging, extremisms in temperature, salinity/alkalinity, abrupt rainfall pattern)) and ulitamtely  affect the plant in multiple ways. This nexus review paper will cover four significant points viz (1) the possible impacts of climate change; as the world already facing the problem of food security, in such crucial period, climatic change severely affects all four dimensions of food security (from production to consumption) and will lead to malnutrition/malnourishment faced by low-income peoples. (2) How some major crops (wheat, cotton, rice, maize, and sugarcane) are affected by stress and their consequent loss. (3) How to develop a strategic work to limit crucial factors, like their significant role in climate-smart breeding, developing resilience to stresses, and idiotypic breeding. Additionally, there is an essence of improving food security, as much of our food is wasted before consumption for instance post-harvest losses. (4) Role of biotechnology and genetic engineering in adaptive introgression of the gene or developing plant transgenic against pests. As millions of dollars are invested in innovation and research to cope with future climate change stresses on a plant, hence community base adaptation of innovation is also considered an important factor in crop improvements. Because of such crucial predictions about the future impacts of climate change on agriculture, we must adopt measures to evolve crop.

Genetic engineering of plants has enhanced crop productivity in the face of climate change and a growing global population by conferring desirable genetic traits to agricultural crops. Efficient genetic transformation in plants remains a challenge due to the cell wall, a barrier to exogenous biomolecule delivery. Conventional delivery methods are inefficient, damaging to tissue, or are only effective in a limited number of plant species. Nanoparticles are promising materials for biomolecule delivery, owing to their ability to traverse plant cell walls without external force and highly tunable physicochemical properties for diverse cargo conjugation and broad host range applicability. With the advent of engineered nuclease biotechnologies, we discuss the potential of nanoparticles as an optimal platform to deliver biomolecules to plants for genetic engineering. Plant biotechnology is key to ensuring food and energy security; however, biomolecule delivery and progeny regeneration continue to be key challenges in plant genetic engineering. Conventional biomolecule delivery methods in plants have critical drawbacks, such as low efficiency, narrow species range, limited cargo types, and tissue damage. Advances in nanotechnology have created opportunities to overcome limitations in conventional methods: nanoparticles are promising for species-independent passive delivery of DNA, RNA, and proteins. The advent of nuclease-based genome editing (e.g., CRISPR-Cas9) has ushered in a new era of precise genetic engineering that, among other impacts, has enabled the development of genetically engineered crops without harsh regulatory restrictions. The potential of nanoparticles to overcome limitations in conventional delivery makes them excellent candidates for delivery of nuclease-based genome editing cargo, thus making nanoparticle delivery a critical technology for the advancement of plant genetic engineering.

Gene editing is an important genetic engineering technique that enables gene manipulation at the molecular level. It mainly relies on engineered nucleases of biological origin, whose precise functions cannot be replicated in any currently known abiotic artificial material. Here, we show that chiral cysteine-modified CdTe nanoparticles can specifically recognize and, following photonic excitation, cut at the restriction site GAT′ATC (′ indicates the cut site) in double-stranded DNA exceeding 90 base pairs, mimicking a restriction endonuclease. Although photoinduced reactive oxygen species are found to be responsible for the cleavage activity, the sequence selectivity arises from the affinity between cysteine and the conformation of the specific DNA sequence, as confirmed by quantum-chemical calculations. In addition, we demonstrate non-enzymatic sequence-specific DNA incision in living cells and in vivo using these CdTe nanoparticles, which may help in the design of abiotic materials for gene editing and other biological applications.