UMD researcher collaborates with Iowa State to develop new tool for genetically modifying plants
Image Credit: generated by DALL-E, OpenAI, August 27, 2025. Edited by Kimbra Cutlip
For decades, scientists have been genetically modifying plants to increase yields and nutritional value, or make them more resistant to disease or harsh conditions. Only two major approaches have been used for delivering the genetic materials, and both have limitations.
A new invention developed by a team including University of Maryland plant scientist Yiping Qi takes a dramatic step forward, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of one of those tools by more than 70% in some cases. The gene gun is considered a universal tool for editing plant, animal, and even bacterial cells, however, it is rather a blunt tool that bombards plant tissue with genetic material in the hope that some of it will reach its target inside a surviving cell.
But Qi and his colleagues at Iowa State University have overcome that problem, developing a more focused gene gun technology that is 10 to 20 times more efficient. The tool, which they call the Flow Guiding Barrel could save agricultural scientists millions of dollars in time and turnaround costs to develop improved crops. The researchers describe their technology in the journal Nature Communications.
The old method of gene gun delivery, called biolistic delivery, involves coating gold or tungsten microparticles, just a few millionths of a meter in size, with the desired genetic material and then shooting the particles into plant cells. Some of those cells survive the particle bombardment, take up the introduced DNA and express the corresponding traits. Whole plants can then be grown from the transformed cells.
But the high velocity microprojectiles can cause tissue damage and result in fragmented gene insertion, rendering the results inconsistent and unpredictable. That was accepted as standard practice until Qi’s collaborator, Iowa State University materials engineer Shan Jiang analyzed the injection process using fluid dynamics. Jiang identified the ways in which the old method interrupted the flow and hindered the delivery of material. The team likened it to shooting a gun without a barrel.
The team redesigned the gene gun to better guide the flow of material into plant tissues. Their computer modeling showed a conventional gene gun directs about 21% of loaded particles toward its plant cell targets while their new gun, equipped with a “Flow Guiding Barrel,” delivers nearly 100%. Lab tests confirmed that the efficiency of gene delivery increased substantially.
Qi found that the new Flow Guiding Barrel doubled the efficiency of his experiments using CRISPR genome editing tools in wheat, noting that the material he injected penetrated deeper into the part of the wheat plant where cell and leaf production occurs.
“This translated to the higher efficiency of heritable genome editing in the next generation of wheat,” Qi said. “While this demonstration was done in wheat, one can envision such improvement can also benefit other crops, like barley, sorghum, etcetera.”
Researchers also tested the tool for other types of transformation and gene editing techniques such as the use of viral particles to deliver a transgene - DNA from a different type of plant -into maize seedlings, and found a 17-fold improvement in the efficiency of infection, and a 22-fold increase in delivering material for studying gene expression in onions.
The team from Iowa State is now developing a start-up company to patent and distribute the new Flow Guiding Barrel and make it available to all plant scientists. UMD and Iowa State scientists co-filed a patent application on using the improved gene gun to deliver genetic materials directly into the stem cells of plants.
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Qi’s research on this subject is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the United States Department of Agriculture. This story does not necessarily reflect the views of these organizations.
This story is adapted from the original news story produced by Iowa State University:
https://www.news.iastate.edu/news/invention-improves-gene-gun-targets-efficiency-gains-plant-research
