What are TALENs?

ISAAA News - January 6, 2021

Figure: ISAAA photo; Pocket K

Plants are constantly exposed to various biotic and abiotic stresses. Thus, scientists continue to develop tools that help improve the field of plant breeding. These new tools and practices are referred to as plant breeding innovations, which include transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs), clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR), zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs), and homing endonucleases or meganucleases.

CRISPRs have become the most popular of the genome editing techniques. Yet, TALENS are extremely precise and have additional capabilities, such as targeting any DNA sequence, discriminating between methylated and unmethylated DNA targets, and modifying DNA within organelles such as mitochondria.

Download Plant Breeding Innovation: TALENs (Pocket K No. 59) to know more.

Pocket Ks are Pockets of Knowledge, peer-reviewed and packaged information on crop biotechnology products and related issues which are available for download from the ISAAA website and optimized for printing or mobile use. Pocket K No. 59 was developed with 2Blades Foundation.