Why Nanobodies May Be a Game-Changing Plant Health Technology
December 23, 2022 On Christmas Eve 2020, a group of scientists released a report on a revolutionary new method for battling COVID-19. As a couple of ag researchers read through the findings, they became more and more excited. The potential of the described technology seemed almost limitless.
Nanobodies, a tiny piece of the antibody cells found in the camelid animal family (camels, llamas, and so on), could interfere with just about any cellular organism, including bacteria and viruses.
One of those scientists reading the study results was Michelle Heck, PhD, Emerging Pests and Pathogens Research Molecular Biologist, USDA-ARS, who quickly reached out to her Florida colleagues, Robert Shattters, PhD, Research Molecular Biologist, USDA-ARS, and Marco Pitino, Lead Project Scientist at AgroSource. They were leading a team trying to find a way to battle citrus greening, an invasive disease with no known cure. The bacterial disease, vectored by the citrus psyllid, is slowly destroying the Florida citrus industry.
“The world was shut down, and we were texting with our group of scientists,” Heck says. “When we saw this paper, we were like, ‘Hey, what if we could produce these COVID-19 nanobodies in plants using our symbiont technology?”
A technology that holds promise to finally fight back citrus greening is revolutionary enough. A technology that can potentially treat any disease in any organism is a game changer.
Heck, Shatters, and Pitino set out to do the following: See if plants and symbionts could produce nanobodies against COVID-19 and citrus greening disease, and find a cost-effective way to deliver nanobodies to trees to fight against citrus greening.
The trio recently released their own study showing proof of concept for these ideas.
Learn more in a Q&A in Meister Media Worldwide’s new Plant Health Report, part of the 2022 Global Insights Series. Check out the full report here, and access past reports on technology, soil health, biological crop protection, and more here.
Subscribe to eNewsletter
