Analysis: China Races to Build Its Own Gene-Editing Toolkit — With an AI Assist

In a lab in Changzhou, an industrial city in eastern China, researchers at agritech startup Wimi Biotechnology Co. Ltd. are doing something that sounds almost too simple: they “cut” a single stretch of corn DNA, let the plant repair itself, and wait to see what new trait emerges — higher yield, a shorter stalk, less water in the kernel.

The tool making the cut isn’t the famous CRISPR-Cas9 enzyme that won its discoverers a Nobel Prize in 2020. It’s CasY7, a protein Wimi Biotech’s scientists engineered themselves, in part because Cas9 comes with a legal complication they’d rather avoid.