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CRISPR/Cas9 editing of carotenoid genes in tomato

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Abstract

CRISPR/Cas9 technology is rapidly spreading as genome editing system in crop breeding. The efficacy of CRISPR/Cas9 in tomato was tested on Psy1 and CrtR-b2, two key genes of carotenoid biosynthesis. Carotenoids are plant secondary metabolites that must be present in the diet of higher animals because they exert irreplaceable functions in important physiological processes. Psy1 and CrtR-b2 were chosen because their impairment is easily detectable as a change of fruit or flower color. Two CRISPR/Cas9 constructs were designed to target neighboring sequences on the first exon of each gene. Thirty-four out of forty-nine (69%) transformed plants showed the expected loss-of-function phenotypes due to the editing of both alleles of a locus. However, by including the seven plants edited only at one of the two homologs and showing a normal phenotype, the editing rate reaches the 84%. Although none chimeric phenotype was observed, the cloning of target region amplified fragments revealed that in the 40% of analyzed DNA samples were present more than two alleles. As concerning the type of mutation, it was possible to identify 34 new different alleles across the four transformation experiments. The sequence characterization of the CRISPR/Cas9-induced mutations showed that the most frequent repair errors were the insertion and the deletion of one base. The results of this study prove that the CRISPRCas9 system can be an efficient and quick method for the generation of useful mutations in tomato to be implemented in breeding programs.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all the Colleagues of Agronomic Service Unit of the Metapontum Agrobios Research Centre for help with plant maintenance and seed collection. We are also grateful to Laura Giorio for providing language help. This work was funded by ALSIA (Agenzia Lucana per lo Sviluppo e l’Innovazione in Agricoltura) in the framework of the “Piano Annuale di Attività 2016”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Metapontum Agrobios Research Centre, Agenzia Lucana per lo Sviluppo e l’Innovazione in Agricoltura, SS Jonica 106, km 448.2, 75012, Metaponto, Italy

    Caterina D’Ambrosio, Adriana Lucia Stigliani & Giovanni Giorio

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  1. Caterina D’Ambrosio
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  2. Adriana Lucia Stigliani
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  3. Giovanni Giorio
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Correspondence to Caterina D’Ambrosio.

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D’Ambrosio, C., Stigliani, A.L. & Giorio, G. CRISPR/Cas9 editing of carotenoid genes in tomato. Transgenic Res 27, 367–378 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11248-018-0079-9

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