This Technology Is Going To Revolutionize Our Food System

How CRISPR's gene-editing technology is going to change the way we eat.

- Adele Peters

In the coming decade, you might be able to eat a peanut without suffering an allergic reaction—even if just the whiff of one today makes you break out in hives. You’ll likely enjoy juicier tomatoes and leaner cuts of pork. Your breakfast cereal could even be made from drought-resistant corn.

These enhancements are all possible thanks to genetic editing—but not the old, laborious GMO techniques that have raised the suspicions of many consumers. Instead, they’re a result of the remarkably efficient—and precise—CRISPR-Cas9 gene-modification tool.

The technology is based on a natural process that many bacteria use to protect themselves: they cut attacking viruses’ DNA with a Cas9 enzyme. (The term CRISPR is short for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats,” which describes the patterns bacteria use to detect their attackers.) A few years ago, researchers at both the University of California, Berkeley, and MIT figured out that by employing guide RNA—the same type of molecule that bacteria use, which is easy to make in a lab—they could target any spot in the genome of plants and animals to make a deletion or paste in something else. In other words, they could remove and add traits. And they could do it quickly, shortening the process of gene modification from weeks (or even years) to a matter of days.