MUMBAI, India, Feb. 13 -- Intellectual Property India has published a patent application (202611000034 A) filed by Icar-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, on Jan. 1, for 'enhanced crispr/cas9 editing in plants via synthetic 86-nt grna scaffold for multigene targeting.'
Inventor(s) include Tushar Kanti Dutta; Soham Ray; Joshitha Vijayan; Voodikala Sai Akhil; Katakam Rupinikrishna; and Viswanathan Chinnusamy.
The application for the patent was published on Feb. 13, under issue no. 07/2026.
According to the abstract released by the Intellectual Property India: "This invention describes a synthetic 86-nucleotide guide RNA (gRNA) scaffold engineered to enhance the efficiency of CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing in plants. The scaffold comprises a structurally stabilized stem-loop RAR (tetra loop) extended by ten nucleotides and includes a targeted base substitution that eliminates premature transcription termination. These modifications improve the thermodynamic stability, folding fidelity, and Cas9-binding affinity of the gRNA, resulting in significantly increased editing efficiency across diverse plant species. The scaffold is universally operable in monocot and dicot systems and is fully compatible with multiplex editing architectures, including polycistronic tRNA-gRNA (PTG) constructs. Empirical data demonstrate a two-fold improvement in editing efficiency at multiple loci across Arabidopsis, tomato, and rice. Additionally, its deployment enabled knockout of plant susceptibility genes, conferring enhanced resistance to root-knot nematodes without affecting plant growth. The invention provides a scalable, modular platform for precision plant genome engineering and trait improvement."
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