One Experiment: The devil in the greenhouse

Tomatoes and potatoes have a lot of relatives. Their nightshade genus includes over 1,500 distinct species. But not all are as friendly as those beloved staple foods. Lurking amongst them is a prickly purple devil with a supervillainous moniker.

Its name? Malevolence.

Some plants just hate us. Malevolence is covered in sharp, 1-to-1.5-inch-long barbs—the largest and most pronounced among all nightshades. It gets worse. The Brazilian native’s branches, leaves, and fruit are all toxic. Its sap irritates the skin on contact. Traditionally, it would take generations to breed out these undesirable traits. But that’s no longer necessarily the case, thanks to a recent breakthrough at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). Now, with CRISPR gene editing technology, this long, selective process can be completed faster and easier than ever before.

Farmers have been genetically modifying plants since the dawn of agriculture. This has led to higher yields, less pesticide use, and better adaptation to climate change. Most gene editing focuses on familiar, industrial-scale crops. But other semi-domesticated, indigenous crops could one day be scaled up as well. That is, if they can acquire the right traits—or lose the wrong ones.

CSHL Professor and HHMI Investigator Zachary Lippman and postdoc Jack Satterlee are leveraging CRISPR to shine a light on the genetics behind extreme traits like malevolence’s barbs. With the help of gene editing technology, even this devilish plant might one day turn over a new leaf.

“We’re interested in this trait from two perspectives,” Satterlee says. “One is crop domestication—using CRISPR to get rid of the prickles because they’re really unpleasant. And the other is the genetics of how the prickles are controlled.”

Genetic editing is a specialty of the Lippman lab. They’ve previously used CRISPR to create tomatoes with faster flowering and ripening times. Lippman and his team are also working to scale up related crops like groundcherry and African eggplant. Their efforts to bring groundcherry to market led to the first genetic blueprints, or models, for two types of the small, sweet berry.

Taming malevolence could point to new ways of controlling gene expression in crops and other plants. Lippman and Satterlee’s recent work has brought them one step closer. They discovered that suppressing members of the LONELY GUY (LOG) gene family can reduce or eliminate prickles in about 20 different species. These include famously thorny plants like roses and indigenous crops like Australia’s desert raisin.

It may be a long while before humanity is safe from the purple devil. In the meantime, the Lippman lab’s research is helping us better understand how evolution works in plants and all life on Earth.

Written by: Nick Wurm, Communications Specialist | wurm@cshl.edu | 516-367-5940