Research progress on CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing technique in plants

Many physical, chemical, and biotic stresses always threaten plants during their growth and development. Using the genome editing technique is a good strategy to improve plant characteristics. CRISPR/Cas (clustered regulatory interspaced short palindromic repeats / CRISPR-associated protein), the adaptive and heritable immune system of prokaryotes, is a genome editing technique newly developed during recent years. At present, the type II CRISPR / Cas9 system is most widely used. Many plants, such as Arabidopsis thaliana, tobacco, soybean, tomato, potato, rice, wheat, maize, sorghum, petunia, banana, sweet orange, apple, poplar, and Marchantia polymorpha, have been edited successfully for stress tolerance, delay of fruit ripening, herbicide resistance, and disease resistance, etc. This system is achieved by the formation of nuclease Cas9 and crRNA: tracrRNA (CRISPR-derived RNA:trans-activating RNA) complex. Further studies about the effect of the promoters of Cas9 and gRNA and the number of gRNA targets on gene editing efficiency have been discussed. ? 2018 Science Press. All rights reserved.