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My home CRISPR kit for plants hit a 92% success rate and it's got me worried
I've been tinkering with a basic gene editing kit on tomato plants in my garage for about six months. Just tracking simple stuff like drought resistance. Kept a spreadsheet. Last week I ran the numbers. Out of 50 modified seeds, 46 grew into plants that showed the exact trait I coded for. That's a 92% hit rate. For a hobbyist with gear from a website, that's wild. It worked way better than the 60% the kit's guide said to expect. The science is just... there now. Cheap and easy. Makes you think. If I can do this in my garage, what's stopping anyone? What rules even apply anymore? Has anyone else seen their own small scale tests blow past the expected numbers like that?
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violatorres6mo ago
Hold up, you're tracking drought resistance in six months? That's the part that's off. You can't really test true, long term drought tolerance in a single growing season, you're probably just seeing a marker like early wilting point. The 92% is likely for that specific marker, not the whole complex trait. The kits are getting good at hitting their target gene, but the real world result is a whole other thing. Makes the success rate feel a bit different when you think about it that way.
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adam_thompson536mo ago
Honestly, that 92% is still the scary part to me. The kit hit what you aimed at, and that's the core tech getting easy. The long term trait is another step, but the first door is already wide open.
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