Sharing Medical Big Data While Preserving Patient Confidentiality in Innovative Medicines Initiative: A Summary and Case Report from BigData@Heart.

Sharing individual patient data (IPD) is a simple concept but complex to achieve due to data privacy and data security concerns, underdeveloped guidelines, and legal barriers. Sharing IPD is additionally difficult in big data-driven collaborations such as Bigdata@Heart in the Innovative Medicines Initiative, due to competing interests between diverse consortium members. One project within BigData@Heart, case study 1, needed to pool data from seven heterogeneous data sets: five randomized controlled trials from three different industry partners, and two disease registries.

Complex Trait Loci in Maize Enabled by CRISPR-Cas9 Mediated Gene Insertion.

Modern maize hybrids often contain biotech and native traits. To-date all biotech traits have been randomly inserted in the genome. Consequently, developing hybrids with multiple traits is expensive, time-consuming, and complex.

Superior field performance of waxy corn engineered using CRISPR-Cas9.

We created waxy corn hybrids by CRISPR-Cas9 editing of a waxy allele in 12 elite inbred maize lines, a process that was more than a year faster than conventional trait introgression using backcrossing and marker-assisted selection. Field trials at 25 locations showed that CRISPR-waxy hybrids were agronomically superior to introgressed hybrids, producing on average 5.5 bushels per acre higher yield.

Recurrent Selection for Transgene Activity Levels in Maize Results in Proxy Selection for a Native Gene with the Same Promoter.

High activity levels of a transgene can be very useful, making a transgene easier to evaluate for safety and efficacy. High activity levels can also increase the economic benefit of the production of high value proteins in transgenic plants. The goal of this research is to determine if recurrent selection for activity of a transgene will result in higher activity, and if selection for activity of a transgene controlled by a native promoter will also increase protein levels of the native gene with the same promoter.