Genome editing for crop improvement in China

15^th Asia-Pacific Biotechnology Congress

July 20-22, 2017 Melbourne, Australia

Xun Wei, Yiqiang Ge, Huijun Guo, Hongguan Zhao and Luxiang Liu

China Rural Technology Development Center, China
Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Bioprocess Biotech

Abstract :

Rapid development of genome editing technologies has provided an additional option for reverse genetics and gene functional understanding, which include Zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs), transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (CRISPR/Cas9) system. These techniques have been applied in wheat (three TaMLO homologs), rice (OsBADH2, OsPDS, Os02g23823 and OsMPK2 genes), maize (ZmPSY1), soybean (GmFT2a) and other crops in China. The optimized RNA-guided endonuclease system based on CRISPR/Cas9 increased mutation frequency in T0 transgenic plants up to 91.2% and could generate and spread desired mutations rapidly. The induced mutation by genome editing was hereditable and resulted in phenotypic variation in subsequent hybridization and backcrossing. It has been used to generate mutations with target improved agronomic traits, such as powdery mildew resistance (strong resistance to tested virulent Bgt races) in wheat, smaller leaf angle (more than 50%) in maize, later flowering time (both long-day and short-day conditions) in soybean. This technology has showed great commercial potentialities because of transgene-clean progeny. A five-step guiding principle for genome edited crops has been recommended by scientists.

Biography :

Email: zhhg@most.cn, liuluxiang@caas.cn