UC San Diego joins IGI as fourth UC partner
UC San Diego announced it is joining the Innovative Genomics Institute as the consortium's fourth University of California partner campus, broadening a CRISPR-focused research effort founded in 2015 by Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna. Originally formed between UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco with an initial focus on human health, IGI has since expanded into sustainable agriculture and climate applications and added UC Davis as a partner. UC San Diego will contribute expertise in environmental and marine science, engineering, computer science and the biomedical sciences, the institute said.
Prior collaborations and recent funding
The two institutions have been collaborating for several years, including joint work with UC San Diego professors Joe Pogliano and Kit Pogliano on applied microbiology projects such as therapies using "jumbo phage" against antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections. In 2023, UC San Diego researchers received $10 million from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to study the biomedical promise of jumbo phage. That same year, IGI received a $70 million gift through the Audacious Project to develop microbiome-editing tools aimed at challenges including livestock methane emissions and inflammatory diseases such as asthma.
Planned synergies across climate and medicine
IGI executive director Brad Ringeisen said UC San Diego's strengths in engineering, medical devices, environmental research and the microbiome complement IGI's existing programs, allowing the institute to expand its societal impact. Planned joint projects include interdisciplinary programs to bolster climate resilience in oceans and soils through scalable genomic solutions, and combining UC Berkeley's biotechnology discovery engine with UC San Diego's biomedical research and health system to accelerate drug discovery across areas such as antimicrobial resistance and neurodegenerative disease.
Nature review urges gene-edited, climate-resilient crops
Separately, researchers from Ghent University and international collaborators published a review in Nature examining how genetic technologies, including CRISPR-based genome editing, can produce crops richer in essential vitamins and minerals while improving tolerance to drought, heat, salinity and other climate-related stresses. The review, co-authored by Professor Dominique Van Der Straeten and Emeritus Professor Marc Van Montagu, a pioneer in plant biotechnology, frames a triple challenge for agriculture: producing enough food, improving nutritional quality and adapting to a changing climate. The authors cautioned that genome editing alone cannot eliminate hidden hunger, and that conventional breeding and other biotechnological approaches remain essential parts of the toolkit.
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