@jamexnik_: Nitroduck designs new colors, flavors, and disease resistance into fruits and veggies. We integrate CRISPR into breedin…

X AI KOLs Following Products
crispr agriculture gene-editing biotech startup plant-synthetic-biology pollen-mediated-editing

Summary

Nitroduck, founded by plant synthetic biologists and iGEM Grand Prize winners, is launching a CRISPR-based crop design platform that delivers gene edits via pollen grains instead of stem cells, aiming to make any crop gene-editable and eventually obsolete pesticides by 2042.

Nitroduck designs new colors, flavors, and disease resistance into fruits and veggies. We integrate CRISPR into breeding through pollen, making any crop gene-editable. Breeding a new specialty crop variety takes 8 - 16 years: breeders hope for random gene combinations and mutations, then spend years picking out the good ones. Meanwhile, consumer tastes, the climate trends, and pathogens change way faster. Now, accessible genome sequencing and AI can tell breeders what to aim for instead of what to hope for, and CRISPR can turn random mutations into chosen ones. The catch is that CRISPR only works on about 15% of crops. It has to go into a single stem cell that’s then regrown into a whole plant, a process that has to be worked out for each variety, which is cost-prohibitive. We skip the stem cell and put CRISPR into a pollen grain. The grain pollinates a flower, and out comes an edited seed - seamlessly tapping into how breeders already work. Matúš, Miro, and I are plant synthetic biologists who made duckweed, the smallest and fastest-growing plant on Earth, genetically engineerable. For doing so we won the Grand Prize at iGEM, the “Olympics of biotech.” During our studies, we engineered 4x more plants than the average plant scientist does in a whole career. Now we’re building Nitroduck, The Crop Design Company, which will make pesticides obsolete by 2042.
Original Article
View Cached Full Text

Cached at: 11/01/26, 07:58 PM

Nitroduck designs new colors, flavors, and disease resistance into fruits and veggies. We integrate CRISPR into breeding through pollen, making any crop gene-editable.

Breeding a new specialty crop variety takes 8 - 16 years: breeders hope for random gene combinations and mutations, then spend years picking out the good ones. Meanwhile, consumer tastes, the climate trends, and pathogens change way faster.

Now, accessible genome sequencing and AI can tell breeders what to aim for instead of what to hope for, and CRISPR can turn random mutations into chosen ones. The catch is that CRISPR only works on about 15% of crops. It has to go into a single stem cell that’s then regrown into a whole plant, a process that has to be worked out for each variety, which is cost-prohibitive.

We skip the stem cell and put CRISPR into a pollen grain. The grain pollinates a flower, and out comes an edited seed - seamlessly tapping into how breeders already work.

Matúš, Miro, and I are plant synthetic biologists who made duckweed, the smallest and fastest-growing plant on Earth, genetically engineerable. For doing so we won the Grand Prize at iGEM, the “Olympics of biotech.” During our studies, we engineered 4x more plants than the average plant scientist does in a whole career. Now we’re building Nitroduck, The Crop Design Company, which will make pesticides obsolete by 2042.

Thx man!

Similar Articles

How engineered microbes could help feed the world’s crops

MIT Technology Review

Engineered microbes with genetic switches could reduce reliance on chemical fertilizers, cutting greenhouse gas emissions and farmer costs. Startup Switch Bioworks is trialing this approach by allowing microbes to thrive before producing ammonia for crops.

@Phoenixyin13: Breaking! This is the latest major breakthrough in synthetic biology, confirmed by The New York Times in a front-page story. A team led by University of Minnesota scientist Kate Adamala has used non-living chemical components to assemble, from scratch, a brand-new cell—SpudCell. In the past, gene editing was like buying a ready-made car and swapping a tire or upgrading the engine. Now, scientists have essentially gone to the parts factory, bought iron, rubber, circuits, and assembled from the ground up a prototype of artificial life that can refuel itself, run, and self-replicate.

X AI KOLs Timeline

A team led by Kate Adamala at the University of Minnesota has built a completely new cell, SpudCell, from non-living chemical components. It can grow, divide, and evolve—a milestone breakthrough in synthetic biology.