Medical News Non-addictive CRISPR-edited tobacco could help eliminate smoking

Medical News
Growing low-nicotine tobacco could help people stop smokingDescription:zakir hossain chowdhury/Barcroft Media via Getty
By Michael Le PageA gene-edited tobacco plant created using the CRISPR technique has the lowest ever amount of nicotine. It could boost efforts to reduce nicotine in cigarettes to non-addictive levels, as the US plans to do.
Felix Stehle and Julia Schachtsiek at the Technical University of Dortmund in Germany used CRISPR to disable six enzymes involved in the production of nicotine in the tobacco plant. They started with a strain that usually contains 16 milligrams of nicotine per gram of dry tobacco, but their gene-edited version …