Imo a marker assisted selection/breeding plan would be faster.
Not sure which would be more work. Probably depends on the robot you chose to setup your pcr.
I dont think so
I know ppl already doing this
Have yet to see anyone even attempt what you’re talking about in the hemp space with hemp and cannabis
I’m sure what Oregon cbd did with cbg is similar but that took them years after finding there first outlier
If you define hemp as low THC cannabis, then knocking out the thca synthase loci in your drug strain of choice might make some sense.
Certainly easier to break a couple or three (thca synthase) genes (with CRISPR) than get six or more terpene genes and their required cis/trans factors engineered into Finola (with CRISPR).
certainly none of the “hemp” out there has ever been crossed by drug strain cannabis to achieve great taste and low thc…at least not to your knowledge…
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just pointing out that even without using marker assisted selection, which could get the job done in very few crosses with the right experimental design, folks HAVE successfully achieved “hemp” with flavor profiles that don’t taste like the FIRST such crosses.
Conventional breeding works…and with marker assistance, and if you’ve got the markers, you’ll hit your target. just need to screen through the progeny.
CRISPR is an awesome tool, but until you’ve actually made transgenic plants, I don’t think you’re gonna grok how much work it is to get ONE gene in and working the way you want it to. getting more than a couple in successfully was a long process in plants and animals before CRISPR, and it is still non-trivial.
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If marker assisted selection and crossing drug strains are the same thing then I guess where all breeders and geneticists
Are you saying these 2 are the same?
Because crossing strains isn’t the same thing as a marker assisted breeding project, idk why you’d even imply something like that
This is why I have a hard time having a logical conversation with you, you always say something totally off topic out in left field that i can’t follow and has nothing to do with what we’re talking about
I dont know shit about genetics; I defer to cyclopath here; he is the only one I know of in this community with real academic genetics experience.
If crispr was that easy; and making frankenplants was that easy; we would have so many crazy strains already here imo; the tech and understanding will get there; but it ain’t there yet imo. I know of one legit small company doing crispr research and they havent produced shit in 2 years since I first met em, dont think they ever will produce anything of note either cause they are going broke; banking rolling r&d with nothing of value to show for it; was asked to find them an angel investor. But that’s a fools errand with their track record.
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the traits that Mendel used to distinguish his peas, and the molecular markers we can now use are conceptually identical. variations in the DNA sequence. they are transmitted in EXACTLY the same way.
the difference is that if you have DNA sequence to design PCR primers you can pool and muliplex and find your one in however many million you need events to achieve your goal.
if you know folks that are already
I repeat that knocking out (down) the THC synthase loci to achieve “hemp” is gonna easier that moving a bunch of genes and getting them to play nice in the same plant.
been there. done that. when it was fucking unheard of.
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This is part of a larger discussion: there are a bunch of folks selling hemp terpenes, and lot of folks who define cannabis derived terpenes to both “cannabis” and “hemp”. others that “all hemp tastes bad”.
There are absolutely genetic differences between the cannabis varieties we use to get high, and the ones we use for fiber. strangely enough the ones we’re calling “hemp” to harvest CBD from fall are more closely related to strains developed for their cannabinoid content than those developed for their fiber content…so if we want to to smell like “cannabis” we can absolutely get there. if we leverage the available sequence data (did you explore the click bait?) rather than grow out 10 million female plants, grow them to maturity and huff them to see if we won the lottery, we can speed up the breeding process.
the key is being able to define what “win” looks like. ie what genes do we need? I don’t know. but I’ve got a decent idea how to figure that out, and know there are lots of others who can too.
then you need to figure out what that “jackpot” means for sample size and DNA pooling strategies. you’ll also want to collect “partial wins” and analyze your data for linkage that might not have been available from the public assemblies.
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I always thought hemp was cannabis?? 
Did I miss a memo somewhere
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I wonder if there is a way to isolate compounds we dont even know about yet in da cannabis plant.
nope.
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I know your the expert in this field here. Do you know how to achieve this other than crispr.
I think in a few years we not gonna have to worry about thc limits. With NY legalizing rec cannabis, I think it’s only a matter of time before we see fed legal cannabis.
Would the purpose of this only for terpenes??
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Knockouts have been around for decades longer than CRISPR. Adding snps is much more involved than removing chunks of genetic material.
See, for a motors-and-beams guy, I can pretend I paid attention in biology class
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I would tend to agree that ideally the classification would follow the biology. it’s all cannabis!
there are multiple strategies for knocking genes down. my favorite is mutagenesis, ideally with selection, because screening is hard work. I prefer transposons for mutagens, as they’re hippy friendly (organic mutagens yo!)…but I also delight in the more targeted approach 
(see: Biological Sciences for how geneticists figure shit out).
Others would include “antisense” expression (essentially a backwards version of the gene of interest). either as small RNA’s or as large chunks, over expression of the target gene (which conversely often turns things OFF…), targeted mutagenesis (there are some transposons that are great for this, because where they start is often close to where they land), and “short interfering RNA”.
CRISPR can be used to edit the target gene (presumably THCAsynthase in this case) into silence/non-functionality (targeted mutagenesis), or any of the other methods one might have chosen before “just CRISPR it” was a thing. it can also be used to silence a gene just by sitting there.
you might find the following worth a read. it’s the best over view I could find without getting too deep. looks like it’s more about ad revenue that education…
Edit: this one explores how “inserts” with CRISPR were made, and are now easier thanks to tricks borrowed from “jumping genes” (transposons).
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Just because you turn off the thc synthase doesn’t mean you’re going to have a hemp plant thats compliant
The cbd synthase makes thc also
Korea is confident they can do a project like this in 3 to 4 life cycles of the plant to stabilize it
Why would they go this route if it’s so hard?
Because doing it your way will modify the cannabinoid content, mine won’t and if you’re going to build the perfect strain it’s much easier to swap around DNA then spend time breeding
How many years would a wedding cake thcp strain take to breed?
Probably 10x longer then it would take us to crispr it
Look at Oregon cbd, it took them 5 years to develop that cbg strain without crispr and they had to grow hundreds of thousands of plants
Fuck that CRISPR is easier, might not be to you but it is to the top CRISPR scientists in the world
I’m sure we would all be excited to be proven wrong
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I honestly wish I could drop the name of the doctor were working with, or even just his 5 citations pages of all the published works he’s done on CRISPR
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“Enzymes are really cool”—KOTK
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What separates hemp from THC strains is not a terpene. Realistically the enzyme would probably be easier to target than TPS-a, TPS-b etc. I do not know anything about that type of breeding so I have no idea how it would be put into practice but the key components pertain to amino acid metabolism and ethylene. Terpenes are just icing on the cake.
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