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A proposal to use gamete cycling in vitro to improve crops and livestock

Nature Biotechnology volume 31, pages 877–880 (2013)Cite this article

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To the Editor:

The grand challenge of producing enough food, fiber and fuel for an ever-growing global population has benefited tremendously from genetic improvements in agriculturally important plants and animals over the past century1. These genetic modifications have enabled billions more people to meet basic needs while using less arable land and providing good returns on research investment2,3 (Supplementary Fig. 1). Yet despite reductions in malnutrition-driven stunting and wasting, many humans remain undernourished4. Satisfying these basic needs becomes more challenging with climate variability, constraints on productive farmland and limited availability of off-farm inputs (e.g., water, pesticides, phosphorus)5,6. Here, we outline the potential implications of an in vitro approach (thus far demonstrated in mice) for generating mature, fully functional female gametes from embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells, as a means for rapidly breeding and introducing new traits into livestock and crops.

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Figure 1: Schematic of COGIV.

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Acknowledgements

We thank staff of the Agricultural Development Program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for its hospitality at the Perennial Crops Convening of October 2012, during which this collaboration commenced. Useful comments on the manuscript from B. Gates and D. Baltensperger are gratefully acknowledged.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA

    Seth C Murray & Andrew H Paterson

  2. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, Washington, USA

    Philip Eckhoff & Lowell Wood

  3. EMOD Project, Intellectual Ventures LLC, Bellevue, Washington, USA

    Philip Eckhoff

  4. Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

    Lowell Wood

  5. Plant Genome Mapping Laboratory, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA

    Andrew H Paterson

Authors
  1. Seth C Murray
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  2. Philip Eckhoff
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  3. Lowell Wood
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  4. Andrew H Paterson
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Seth C Murray.

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P.E. is an employee of Intellectual Ventures LLC.

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Supplementary Note and Supplementary Figure 1 (PDF 251 kb)

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Murray, S., Eckhoff, P., Wood, L. et al. A proposal to use gamete cycling in vitro to improve crops and livestock. Nat Biotechnol 31, 877–880 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.2707

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