Plant gene editing through de novo induction of meristems

First author: Michael F. Maher; Affiliations: University of Minnesota (明尼苏达大学): St. Paul, USA

Corresponding author: Daniel F. Voytas 

Plant gene editing is typically performed by delivering reagents such as Cas9 and single guide RNAs to explants in culture. Edited cells are then induced to differentiate into whole plants by exposure to various hormones. The creation of edited plants through tissue culture is often inefficient, time-consuming, works for only limited species and genotypes, and causes unintended changes to the genome and epigenome. Here we report two methods to generate gene-edited dicotyledonous plants through de novo meristem induction. Developmental regulators and gene-editing reagents are delivered to somatic cells of whole plants. This induces meristems that produce shoots with targeted DNA modifications, and gene edits are transmitted to the next generation. The de novo induction of gene-edited meristems sidesteps the need for tissue culture and promises to overcome a bottleneck in plant gene editing.

植物基因编辑通常来说是往培养中的植物外植体递送一些诸如Cas9和单个向导RNA等材料。然后，会通过各种激素处理编辑后的细胞以诱导形成完整植株。然而，通过组织培养的方式来繁殖编辑植株效率低下、十分费时，而且只适合于少数的几个植物物种和基因型，另外还会导致基因组或表观组意想不到的变化。本文中，作者报道了两个新的方法通过从头分生组织诱导的方式来产生基因编辑的双子叶植物。发育调控因子和基因编辑材料被递送到整个植株的体细胞中。然后会诱导形成新的分生组织，该分生组织之后能够发育形成带有目的DNA修饰的茎，从而基因编辑会被传递到下一代。该套从头诱导的基因编辑的分生组织能够避免组织培养的需求，有望克服植物基因编辑的瓶颈。

通讯：Daniel F. Voytas (https://cbs.umn.edu/voytas-lab/home)

个人简介：1984年，哈佛大学，学士；1990年，哈佛医学院，博士；1991年，约翰·霍普金斯大学，博士后。

研究方向：植物转基因。

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-019-0337-2

Journal: Nature Biotechnology

Published date: December 16, 2019