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BABY BOOM1 is a rice transcription factor that can initiate embryonic development. Its early expression in the zygote normally involves the paternal allele, connecting a contribution from the male gamete to the start of a new developmental programme.

Imtiyaz Khanday and colleagues redirected BABY BOOM1 expression into the unfertilized ovum. This was sufficient to initiate an embryo without fertilization. Combining that trigger with altered meiosis enabled clonal seed production in an engineered system.^[ref]

The components solve different problems: initiating an embryo does not by itself prevent the genetic reshuffling and chromosome-number reduction of ordinary meiosis. This separation explains why a single developmental trigger and a complete clonal propagation system are different experimental achievements.

Imtiyaz Khanday investigates seed development and ways of preserving useful crop genotypes through asexual seed production. His UC Davis research programme connects embryo initiation, seed dormancy and clonal crop propagation.^[ref]

In work published online in 2018 and in a 2019 issue, Khanday and colleagues redirected the rice embryogenesis regulator BABY BOOM1 into the egg cell. Combining embryo initiation without fertilization with altered meiosis produced clonal seeds in an engineered system. The two components address different requirements: starting an embryo and retaining the maternal genotype.^[ref]