TALENs for Better Antidiabetic Plants

Experts from the Vivekanand Education Society and collaborators tackled the role of transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) in improving the anti-diabetic properties of plants. The discussion, authored by Suman Ganger and colleagues, was published as a chapter in the book Antidiabetic Potential of Plants in the Era of Omics released by CRC Press.

TALENs is one of the powerful tools developed for gene editing. It is an engineered endonuclease composed of a programmable, sequence-specific DNA-binding domain to a nonspecific DNA cleavage domain. Because of this tool's ability to efficiently and rapidly modify genomes, it has been a popular option for biological research. One of the promising uses of TALENs is to help produce plant metabolites that supplement or substitute conventional anti-diabetic drug therapy targeting the modifications at the molecular level. The authors provided insights on using TALENs for pathway elucidation, enhanced secondary metabolite production, and creation of knockout mutants for targeted characteristics in medicinal plants. The ability to customize TALENs was highlighted as one of the benefits of the tool to developing better anti-diabetic plants.

Download the book Antidiabetic Plants in the Era of Omics from Routledge for a fee.