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Mid-Iowa Community News

Ames Voice

Ames Voice

Mid-Iowa Community News

Ames Voice

Iowa State engineers, left to right, Connor Thorpe and Shan Jiang helped invent the "Flow Guiding Barrel," which improves gene gun performance for the genetic modification of plants. Jiang is holding a Flow Guiding Barrel. A gene gun is on the left.

ISU research project in plant genome editing leads to a promising new startup

by Jack McClellan, Reporter
Published August 27, 2025
The new Ames start-up Hermes Biomaterials is offering a product with the potential to make new waves in the world of editing plant genetics. It sprouted from a research project at Iowa State University looking into ways to improve the delivery of genetic code into plant cells and is now offering products that promise to significantly boost the delivery and efficiency of genetic information into plants.