Engineering Quantitative Trait Variation for Crop Improvement by Genome Editing
Engineering Quantitative Trait Variation for Crop Improvement by Genome Editing
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DOI：
10.1016/j.cell.2017.08.030
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发表时间：
2017-10-05
期刊：
影响因子：
64.5
通讯作者：
Lippman, Zachary B.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Rodriguez-Leal, Daniel;Lemmon, Zachary H.;Lippman, Zachary B.
在未来几十年里，需要在作物产量方面取得重大进展。然而，植物育种目前受到数量性状的增量改进的限制，这些性状通常依赖于基因调控区中罕见的天然突变的费力选择。在这里，我们证明了启动子的CRISPR/Cas9基因组编辑产生了不同的顺式调节等位基因，为育种提供了有益的定量变异。我们设计了一个简单的遗传方案，该方案利用杂合功能丧失突变体背景中Cas9活性的跨代遗传性，以快速评估许多启动子变体对调节番茄三个主要生产力性状的基因的表型影响：果实大小，花序分枝和植物结构。我们的方法允许在无转基因植物中立即选择和固定新的等位基因，并对产量构成因素进行精细操作。除了一个平台，以提高不同的农业性状的变化，我们的研究结果提供了解剖基因调控变化和数量性状控制之间的复杂关系的基础。
Major advances in crop yields are needed in the coming decades. However, plant breeding is currently limited by incremental improvements in quantitative traits that often rely on laborious selection of rare naturally occurring mutations in gene-regulatory regions. Here, we demonstrate that CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing of promoters generates diverse cis-regulatory alleles that provide beneficial quantitative variation for breeding. We devised a simple genetic scheme, which exploits trans-generational heritability of Cas9 activity in heterozygous loss-of-function mutant backgrounds, to rapidly evaluate the phenotypic impact of numerous promoter variants for genes regulating three major productivity traits in tomato: fruit size, inflorescence branching, and plant architecture. Our approach allows immediate selection and fixation of novel alleles in transgene-free plants and fine manipulation of yield components. Beyond a platform to enhance variation for diverse agricultural traits, our findings provide a foundation for dissecting complex relationships between gene-regulatory changes and control of quantitative traits.