Gene-edited mint produces essential oil with fewer off-flavors
Lv Z, Wang G
Crispr
The mint in your herb garden or windowsill pot carries the same chemistry that determines whether its oil tastes clean or slightly bitter and medicinal, and this research shows that chemistry can now be precisely dialed back.
Mint plants naturally make a compound called menthofuran that can give mint oil an unwanted, harsh flavor and has raised some safety concerns in concentrated forms. Researchers built a gene-editing toolkit for mint and used it to switch off the gene responsible for making menthofuran, and the edited plants produced oil with noticeably less of the compound. This gives growers a path toward better-tasting, higher-quality mint oil without relying on years of traditional breeding.
Key Findings
Optimized protoplast isolation and PEG-mediated transformation protocol established for Mentha haplocalyx '738' (1.5% cellulase R10, 0.2% macerozyme R-10, 3 h digestion; 40% PEG6000)
Identified a truncated mint U6 promoter (HmU6.1-3P) and tomato SlEF1α promoter as most effective for driving sgRNA and Cas9 expression
CRISPR/Cas9 knockout of the menthofuran synthase (MFS) gene produced stable, heritable mutant lines with substantially reduced menthofuran content in edited line #10
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists used CRISPR gene editing to knock out a gene in mint that produces menthofuran, an off-flavor compound, resulting in mint plants with cleaner-tasting, higher-quality essential oil.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Establishment of a CRISPR/Cas9-mediated system for targeted editing of the MFS gene in mint.
The key message of this study is that we established a CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome-editing system for Mentha haplocalyx "738" by optimizing protoplast transient assay and screening effective regula...
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Mentha, also known as mint, is a genus of flowering plants in the mint family, Lamiaceae. It is estimated that 18 to 24 species exist, but the exact distinction between species is unclear. Hybridization occurs naturally where some species' ranges overlap. Many hybrids and cultivars are known.