Fine-tuning sugar content in strawberry
- PDF / 4,291,317 Bytes
- 14 Pages / 595.276 x 793.701 pts Page_size
- 52 Downloads / 181 Views
METHOD
Open Access
Fine-tuning sugar content in strawberry Sinian Xing1†, Kunling Chen1†, Haocheng Zhu1,2, Rui Zhang1, Huawei Zhang1, Bingbing Li3 and Caixia Gao1,2* * Correspondence: cxgao@genetics. ac.cn † Sinian Xing and Kunling Chen contributed equally to this work. 1 State Key Laboratory of Plant Cell and Chromosome Engineering, Center for Genome Editing, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Innovation Academy for Seed Design, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China 2 College of Advanced Agricultural Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
Abstract Fine-tuning quantitative traits for continuous subtle phenotypes is highly advantageous. We engineer the highly conserved upstream open reading frame (uORF) of FvebZIPs1.1 in strawberry (Fragaria vesca), using base editor A3A-PBE. Seven novel alleles are generated. Sugar content of the homozygous T1 mutant lines is 33.9–83.6% higher than that of the wild-type. We also recover a series of transgene-free mutants with 35 novel genotypes containing a continuum of sugar content. All the novel genotypes could be immediately fixed in subsequent generations by asexual reproduction. Genome editing coupled with asexual reproduction offers tremendous opportunities for quantitative trait improvement. Keywords: Upstream open reading frame, Fine-tuning, Basic leucine zipper, Quantitative trait variation, Asexually reproducing crops, Strawberry, Sugar content
Background To meet the demands of the expanding world population and climate change, it is critical to accelerate plant breeding. However, limited sources of the genetic variation underlying quantitative traits pose a challenge to plant breeders [1]. This problem is more severe in asexually reproducing crops, such as strawberry, potato, sugarcane, and grape, as genetic diversity within these species is extremely limited due to the absence of sexual reproduction [2]. However, these species offer one major advantage: once a desirable quantitative genotype is generated, it can be propagated for many generations by asexual reproduction. In plants, the genetic control of major traits is usually complex, and strong or null alleles frequently have deleterious pleiotropic effects [3–5]. Fine-tuning of quantitative traits so as to balance opposing phenotypic side-effects by generating a series of subtle allelic changes is essential for generating novel alleles that can be harnessed for breeding [6, 7]. Genome editing technology is a powerful approach for creating novel allelic variation to fine-tune quantitative traits [1, 8–10]. For example, in tomato, a wide range of cis-regulatory mutations in the SlCLV3 promoter was created by CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing [1]. Remarkably, the © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give approp
Data Loading...
