BULLETIN 1
Gene Drive Technologies: Advances in Health, Conservation, and Governance

ISAAA November 12, 2025
ISAAA, Inc., in partnership with the Outreach Network for Gene Drive Research, will host a free webinar titled Gene Drive Technologies: Advances in Health, Conservation, and Governance on November 20, 2025, from 3:00 to 4:30 PM GMT+8 via Zoom.
Gene drive technology is rapidly advancing, offering powerful new tools with the potential to tackle some of the world's most pressing challenges in public health and environmental conservation. Thus, this webinar will cover core concepts on gene drive while providing timely updates on real-world progress, emerging policy discussions, and the evolving societal considerations shaping the gene drive landscape. Dr. Rhodora Romero-Aldemita, Executive Director of ISAAA, Inc., will moderate the discussions.
What You'll Learn
• Introduction to gene drive technologies and potential applications (Dr. Jackson Champer, Peking University)
• Advances in gene drive for vector-borne disease control (Dr. Brian Tarimo, Transmission Zero)
• Progress on projects for invasive species and biodiversity protection (Dr. Gelshan Godohewa, University of Adelaide)
• Stakeholder engagement for gene drive: best practices and challenges (Delphine Thizy, Independent consultant)
• Regulation and risk assessment (Dr. Brinda Dass, Foundation for the National Institutes of Health)
Limited slots only. Register now.

 

BULLETIN 2
Scientists Speed Up Growth of Transgenic Plants from Months to Weeks

 

Experts from Texas Tech University, the University of Minnesota, and the National Polytechnic Institute (Instituto Politécnico Nacional) have developed a new method to grow engineered plants in weeks instead of months by enhancing the plant's natural ability to regenerate after being wounded or clipped. Using this approach, the researchers successfully created transgenic plants by combining genetic engineering with the plant's own healing process.
The researchers used Agrobacterium, a bacterium known for transferring DNA into plants, to deliver new genes directly to wound sites. When applied to the plants, the modified bacteria triggered the plants' natural regrowth process, producing shoots and seeds. The technique, tested in tomatoes and soybeans, achieved a success rate of 21% to 35% and reduced soybean growth time from three to four months to just three and a half weeks.
The findings show that activating the plant's wound-induced regeneration pathway can make genetic modification faster and simpler. This innovation could help overcome key challenges in crop biotechnology, such as the long turnaround time and technical barriers of tissue-culture-based methods. Researchers believe the technique could accelerate the development of improved crop varieties and make genetic engineering more accessible for agricultural innovation.
For more information, read the study from Molecular Plant.
See: https://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/article/default.asp?ID=21590

 

SCIENTIFIC NEWS
A synthetic transcription cascade enables direct in planta shoot regeneration for transgenesis and gene editing in multiple plants
Arjun Ojha Kshetry, Kaushik Ghose, Anshu Alok, Vikas Devkar, Vidhyavathi Raman, Robert M. Stupar, Luis Herrera-Estrella, Feng Zhang and Gunvant B. Patil
Molecular Plant; November 06, 2025; 18:1-16

 

  

Abstract
Developing transgenic and/or gene-edited plants largely depends on tedious, lengthy, and costly in vitro regeneration protocols. While plants have remarkable regeneration ability, not all species, genotypes, or even explants exhibit the same transformation and regeneration potential under in vitro conditions. To tackle this bottleneck, we have developed a seamless and user-friendly system to induce transgenic and gene-edited de novo meristems via a synthetic cascade comprising a wound-induced regeneration pathway, plant developmental regulators (DRs), and gene-editing reagents. WOUND INDUCED DEDIFFERENTIATION 1 (WIND1) was used as a transcriptional regulator to control the expression of various DR genes driven by ENHANCER OF SHOOT REGENERATION 1 (ESR1) promoter. This cascade was strategically applied in planta to the non-meristematic internode of Nicotiana benthamiana to induce meristematic activity and regenerate de novo shoots with knockout mutations of the phytoene desaturase (PDS) gene. Among the DR genes tested, the strategic expression of isopentenyl transferase (ipt) driven by the ESR1 promoter under the control of WIND1 proved most effective for efficient regeneration in tobacco. Subsequently, this synthetic toolkit was successfully applied to both tomato and soybean. WIND1 served as a key cellular reprogramming factor, initiating differentiation, while ipt complemented this process by promoting organogenesis through cytokinin biosynthesis. This methodology offers a transformative approach to overcome barriers in plant biotechnology, potentially accelerating the generation of transgenic and gene-edited plants without reliance, or with minimal reliance, on conventional tissue-culture intermediates.
See: https://www.cell.com/molecular-plant/fulltext/S1674-2052(25)00322-3

 

  

 

 

Figure:
Experimental validation of gene constructs designed to assess proAtESR1-driven gene activation in response to AtWIND1 expression.