Sunday Evening News 484/ 2026
Weekly report on genetic engineering, genome editing, biotechnology and legal regulation.
June 2026-07-20 - 2026-07-26 Week 30
Meetings – Conferences / Treffen - Veranstaltungen
Workshop on implementing EC Roadmap on phasing out animals testing in pesticides and biocides
11. Fachtagung Gentechnik
Donnerstag, 17. September 2026 bis Freitag, 18. September 2026 | 12:30 Uhr bis 13:00 Uhr
https://www.lgl.bayern.de/fort_weiterbildung/veranstaltungen/index.htm?dfxid=42632
Press Releases - Media / Presse- und Medienberichte
Neue Gentechnikregeln bald vor Gericht?
https://zukunftsstiftung-landwirtschaft.de/aktuelles/neue-gentechnikregeln-bald-vor-gericht/
Informationsdienst Gentechnik: Landen neue Gentechnikregeln vor Gericht?
https://www.keine-gentechnik.de/nachricht/juristischer-widerstand-ngt-vo
Hoffie R.: Neue Gentechnik: „Diese Pflanzen sind genauso sicher“
Gesunde Pflanzen – gesunde Menschen: Neue Wege gegen den Versteckten Hunger
Testbiotech: Die Risiken gentechnisch veränderter Mikroorganismen betreffen Menschen, Bienen und Pflanzen zugleich
EPSO response to the EC’s have your say on European partnerships to be implemented as Joint Undertakings –
submission and position paper by EPSO
Surya S Pillai: 41 crops picked for genome-editing to boost climate-resilient farming
Only some selected press releases or media reports are listed here. The daily up-date of the press releases and
media reports are ►here: July week 30
Publications – Publikationen
Europe’s two tiers of genome editing. Nat. Plants 12, 1303 (2026). | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-026-02359-9
van der Sluijs J. P., Delso, N., Axelman, J., Bartomeus, I., Breeze, T. et al. (2026): Towards pollinator stewardship in all policies:
Policy incoherence in the EU is a major barrier to pollinator restoration (Version Preprint). Zenodo| https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20715670
Van Der Straeten, D., Bulut, M., Cao, D. et al. (2026): Genetic technologies to enhance crop nutritional value under climate
change. Nature 654, 877–891 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10593-6
At present, more than 700 million people live with caloric hunger, and more than two billion suffer from micronutrient deficiencies, known as ‘hidden hunger’. From an agricultural viewpoint, three major objectives need to be worked towards simultaneously to achieve zero hunger (the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 2): (1) enhanced yield; (2) higher vitamin and mineral density to sustain recommended daily intake (multi-biofortification); and (3) enhanced climate-change resilience. Although the Green Revolution increased global calorie production, it exacerbated hidden hunger by prioritizing high yield over nutritional quality. Stress from global climate change has been shown to reduce the densities of several micronutrients. CRISPR–Cas, which allows genome editing with extremely high precision, has emerged as a groundbreaking breeding technology that has already been adopted by many countries. Here we examine how CRISPR–Cas-based approaches could be used to achieve biofortification targets by enhancing micronutrient densities to the levels necessary to alleviate dietary vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Given the limited time frame available to achieve zero hunger, we argue that CRISPR–Cas technologies should be combined with metabolic engineering based on transformation and other technologies. We also consider untapped resources beyond metabolic pathways and current CRISPR–Cas methodologies to address one of the most important societal issues of the twenty-first century.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10593-6
Riedmayr, L.M., Koeppel, J., Church, G.M. et al. (2026): Large-scale genome structure interrogation via recombinase-
mediated rearrangements of multiplexed prime edits in repetitive elements. Nat Protoc | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41596-026-01409-y
Large-scale interrogation of genome structure is crucial for understanding how genomic organization influences cellular function, yet existing methods are limited by the low density of achievable modifications or the toxicity of methods. Here we address this gap by presenting a versatile approach that combines gene editing and recombinase technologies. The protocol serves two critical purposes: (1) facilitating the introduction of hundreds to thousands of precise genomic edits per cell and (2) enabling the creation of a controlled platform to systematically investigate the effects of induced genomic rearrangements. Specifically, the method leverages prime editing to insert recombinase recognition sites (for example, loxP) into repetitive genomic regions, such as LINE-1 elements, thereby enabling extensive genetic modifications in human cells. This scale of genome editing has not previously been attainable and supports a wide range of studies, including genome-wide functional analyses and essentiality mapping. Inducing controlled rearrangements with recombinase and tracking cell survival under selective conditions allows direct mapping of genome architecture to cellular fitness, opening new opportunities for genome-wide functional screens and rational synthetic genome design. Unlike methods that rely on double-strand breaks or random transposon insertion, this Protocol supports a programmable installation of thousands of recombination sites at repeat elements, offering denser and more predictable substrates for controlled genome rearrangement. The full protocol takes ~12–18 weeks to complete and requires intermediate to advanced expertise in genome editing, mammalian cell culture and sequencing analysis.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41596-026-01409-y
Li, MT., Lin, JT., García-Caparros, P. et al. (2026). Metabolic engineering of cereal lipids: from omega-3 fatty acids to wax
esters and pheromones. Adv. Biotechnol. 4, 28 https://doi.org/10.1007/s44307-026-00124-9
Cereals are emerging as attractive platforms for the sustainable production of high-value lipids through metabolic engineering. Although plant lipids play essential biological roles and have considerable economic value, their conventional production from natural sources is often limited by sustainability, scalability and cost. Recent advances in synthetic biology enable the reprogramming of seed lipid metabolism for the tailored synthesis of valuable lipid compounds. In this review, we first summarize the core pathways of fatty acid biosynthesis and triacylglycerol assembly in seeds, together with the genetic transformation and genome editing toolkits available for major cereals. We then highlight recent progress in the heterologous production of specialized lipids, including eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), wax esters, and insect sex pheromones, in engineered plant systems. Finally, we discuss the potential of cereals as scalable and sustainable platforms for the production of high-value lipids. Together, these advances position engineered cereals as promising plant-based factories for applications in agriculture, nutrition, and the emerging bio-based economy.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s44307-026-00124-9
Man Li M., Song Z., Du J., Wu Y et al. (2026): Model microorganisms: From cornerstones of modern discovery to big data-
driven platforms. Model Organisms Research 1 (1), 100009 | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mores.2026.100009
For more than a century, model microorganisms have underpinned major biological explorations and facilitated pivotal advances in molecular genetics, biochemistry and biotechnology. These easy-to-manipulate microbes continue to drive technological progress in life sciences, ranging from the decoding of genetic code using Escherichia coli to the application of CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing in various microbial hosts. This article systematically reviews the latest research progress of model microorganisms, and highlights their transformation from basic research objects into programmable chassis for synthetic biology and industrial bioproduction. Benefiting from large-scale microbial big data resources, intelligent data mining technologies and iterative synthetic biology advances, researchers are now tapping into previously unexplored microbial biodiversity to enable customized strain design—developing novel chassis strains tailored for specific applications ranging from chronic disease intervention to targeted biomanufacturing. Combined with CRISPR editing, synthetic genome assembly and AI-assisted optimization, microbial models have evolved into programmable and personalized engineering platforms. Specialized chassis represented by Pseudomonas putida for environmental remediation and Streptomyces for antibiotic discovery further diversify the functional scenarios of modern microbial biotechnology. This review systematically summarizes recent advances in model microorganism research, focusing on the evolving functional positioning of microbial chassis from basic research tools to industrial engineering platforms. It also elaborates on prevailing bottlenecks including industrial scale-up difficulties, imperfect regulatory systems and biosafety risks. Such advanced engineering platforms offer promising solutions to key challenges in human health protection, sustainable agriculture and green biomanufacturing, fueling the sustainable innovation of modern life sciences and biotechnology.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S3117817026000093
EFSA
FEZ Panel (2026): Safety evaluation of the food enzyme containing endo-polygalacturonase and pectinesterase activities from
the non-genetically modified Aspergillus luchuensis strain AP2 903-6. EFSA Journal, 24(7), e10183. https://doi.org/10.2903/j.efsa.2026.10183
https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa.2026.10183
FEZ Panel (2026): Safety evaluation of the food enzyme pectinesterase from the non-genetically modified Aspergillus luchuensis
strain AP2 903-6. EFSA Journal, 24(7), e10184. https://doi.org/10.2903/j.efsa.2026.10184
https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa.2026.10184