An interview with Gao Caixia, an expert on Chinese gene editing.

Recently, Chinese gene editing expert Gao Caixia gave an exclusive interview to Springer Nature to discuss the challenging area of genome editing. As a writer of journals with extensive experience and author of monographs,
Mr. Gao has given positive guidance to young researchers on the contribution and writing of papers. how do
feel about being selected as a key leader of THIS DNA Day? As the only Chinese scholar in the opinion leader, I feel very honored and thank you for your trust, support and encouragement.
I'd love to share my experience with you, especially young scholars, in exploring this challenging area of genome editing.
What do you think are the advantages and difficulties of gene editing in plants compared to model animals? The advantage is that gene editing in plants is not very ethical and relatively easy.
the second advantage is in plant research, not so much attention to "off-target".
a major feature of plant research, especially compared with research related to disease treatment, the final use of offspring materials, basically no contemporary materials for episotype research.
the use of offspring materials means that even if there is a target in the contemporary, offspring separation can be separated from the off-target site, because the number of offspring is sufficient, so we must find no off-target material, from this point of view, "off-target" is not so important, and sometimes even have research needs to use the "off-target" feature to obtain more mutants.
disadvantage is that compared with human cell research, plant research does not have as many available cell lines, and less cell lines with high iso-recombinant recombination efficiency.
therefore, homologous recombination in plants is much less efficient than animal studies, although it is not highin.
it is challenging to deliver CRISPR to various plant cells, which is also present in animal studies.
the delivery of nuclease is a bottleneck in plant and animal research, which requires efforts to overcome.
gene editing in plants, especially crops, and as a front-line expert, can you say a word about biosecurity? I think the vast majority of plant genome editing products are safe.
When scientists or breeders use CRISPR as a new breeding tool to genetically edit plants, in most cases simulate natural mutants, such as the tohoku rice rice flower, which is a natural mutation in a gene that produces a fragrance.
we can now simulate this natural mutation in other rice varieties, knocking out the same gene, and leaving no exgenic genes in the rice genome at all, as in the case of natural mutants.
the entire genome sequencing results show that only one base of this particular gene is missing.
again for white powder disease.
more than 30 years ago to make barley breeders found an anti-white powder disease barley material, so through traditional breeding methods to introduce this disease resistance into barley varieties, more than 30 years later these barley varieties are still resistant to white powder disease.
later scientists discovered that the barley mutant was actually a knockout of the MLO gene.
problem comes, why doeswheat not have natural mutants that resist white powder disease? This is because the wheat MLO gene has three copies, and the probability of knocking out these three genes simultaneously by natural mutation is too low to occur.
if one copy of the natural mutation, wheat is still not disease-resistant.
with CRISPR and other genome editing techniques, it was possible to artificially and target three copies of the gene, and then get wheat resistant to white powder disease.
rice-scented rice and white-powder-resistant barley have been used safely for so many years, and what is safe with scented rice and white-powder-resistant wheat created through genome editing technology? So I think it's safe to create genome editing products along this line.
Your research is published in The Springer Nature's major influential journals, and as the editorial board of the Genome Biology Journal, can you share your views on the construction of academic journals? In my personal opinion, editors are the soul of journals, coordinating the operation of the entire journal, so high-quality editing is essential to the future rise of journals.
additional reviewers are a very important group for journals. There is a virtuous circle between
quality reviewer and journal quality.
when the quality of the journal to a certain extent, it is relatively easy to invite reviewers, some magazines find the reviewers difficult to find, in the final analysis or the magazine's own strength is not enough.
I personally feel that the sooner the better, the sooner all authors look forward to.
of course, the review is a very important part of the need to be very careful. there is a balance between
the editor's need sands and the reviewer's.
the editor very much respect the opinions of reviewers, after all, the editor is responsible for a number of areas, belong stoicism, which also means that in the face of a specific area, especially in the very sub-sector of the paper, its quality judgment editor needs the opinion of professional reviewer.
both, I think Genome Biology is doing very well overall, at least in genome editing.
in addition, I think full communication between editors and contributors is also very important for the development of journals.
contributors have comments and suggestions can be timely feedback to the editor, the editor according to the situation whether to listen and adopt.
many of the editors I have been in touch with have done very well in this regard, which is conducive to communication between people, but also to get the respect of contributors.
I hope that in the next period of time Genome Biology will be able to maintain the existing quality to obtain more room for growth. as the editorial board of the first batch of open-access series,
has many years of experience in academic paper review, what advice does it give young researchers in the field of paper contributions and writing? The competition in the field of genome editing is fierce, so the speed of writing is also important.
if you have a good idea, it should be put into action as soon as possible.
in addition to speed, depth is also an area we should focus on.
many of the research findings in the field of genome editing are disruptive, and technology is developing very fast, a trait that puts us in a dilemma.
if you don't pursue speed, there's no chance at all, but if you're looking for speed, you're going to have to sacrifice what could have been done better and deeper.
I think this is an inevitable contradiction in the early stages of technological development.
as far as the response measures, should be specific subject specific analysis.
speed may be more important if the study itself is simpler, such as validating a system in plants or animals, but if it is a deeper or more innovative subject, we should focus more on depth than speed.
I think the good job evaluation criterion is that the work that really resonates in the field, or that someone else will think of your job once they use it.
people who do technology development want others to use your technology, even better than you, which shows that your technology is valuable.
developed technology needfeedback, whether it can be repeated, how to use it, whether the whole field is widely used, and so on, and the feedback cycle is very short, within six months can see the value of technology, I think this is also the challenge of technical research.
Gao Caixia, Researcher of the National Key Laboratory of Plant Cell and Chromosomal Engineering, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Ph.D. Tutor, Bachelor of Science, Gansu Agricultural University, 1991.
Master's degree from Gansu Agricultural University in 1994.
1997 Ph.D. from China Agricultural University.
a postdoctoral fellow in the research department of DLF-Trifolium, Denmark, 1997-1998.
research scientist, research department, DLF-Trifolium, Denmark, 1998-2009.
was selected as an "outstanding technical person" of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2010 and in June 2016, Gao Caixia was elected to the 5th Agricultural Genetically Modified Biothasafety Committee.
major research areas: research and application of crop genome directional editing technology system, establishment and application of crop genetic transformation technology system, and molecular biology of wheat important functional genes.
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