Periodic Reporting for period 4 - CRISBREED (Multidimensional CRISPR/Cas mediated engineering of plant breeding)
Période du rapport: 2022-04-01 au 2022-09-30
Chromosome engineering is of special interest for plants as basic problems of crop breeding can be solved this way. Till now it was not possible to separate traits if the respective genes are located in close proximity on the same chromosome. Moreover, inversions hinder the exchange of genetic information in specific regions of chromosomes. For both problems we were able to develop proof of concept solutions: By exchanging chromosome arms we are able to separate genes that were genetically linked before. On the other side it should also be possible to bring genes in close proximity that should be transferred together to the next generation. By long read sequencing of crop genomes it only became clear in the last five years that a large number of genome variations between crop varieties is due to large inversions. In the inverted regions no genetic exchanges are possible, which is a big drawback for breeding. We demonstrate that by inducing controlled inversions we can not only bring back genetic change to these regions. Moreover, we were able to block genetic exchange on almost an entire chromosome by inducing inversions. Thus, genes can be genetically linked for the breeding process, which was not possible before.
By now - based on our results in the model plant Arabidopsis – chromosome engineering is already applied by the community to solve breeding problems with crop plants and large inversions have already been reported for corn and rice.
By serendipity we realized that we are able to kill cells by induced double strand breaks in functional repeats. Using promoters specific for individual organs we were able to develop a novel way of tissue engineering. Thus, we were able to block in a controlled the formation of specific organs like petal or side roots. “CRISPR-Kill” could not only be an attractive new tool for controlling secondary metabolism in plants it might also be useful for tissue engineering in all different kinds of multicellular organisms.