Heat treatment and protein tweaks make maize gene editing far more efficient
Liang D, Guo H, Wei J, Zhu F, Zhang Y
Crispr
Corn varieties farmers grow today took decades of careful breeding to perfect, and until now, adding a new trait meant starting that process nearly from scratch; this shortcut lets breeders edit those elite lines directly, which could bring drought tolerance or disease resistance to fields much faster.
Researchers found a way to edit the genes of top-performing corn varieties without having to rebuild all the desirable traits those varieties already carry. They use a technique where pollen carrying gene-editing tools fertilizes an egg, then the egg's own chromosomes are shed, leaving behind only the edited version of the plant's DNA. By keeping the editing protein more stable and applying a brief heat treatment after pollination, they got this to work successfully up to a third of the time, compared to a trickle before.
Key Findings
Post-pollination heat treatment alone boosted haploid editing rates to 19.1%, up to 12-fold higher than untreated controls.
Fusing the CRISPR protein with a stabilizing UBA2 domain improved editing rates 6-fold at the Waxy1 locus and 4.5-fold at the Glossy2 locus.
Combining UBA2 fusion with heat treatment achieved an average editing rate of 25% and a peak of 33% across multiple target sites.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists developed a faster, more reliable method to edit the genes of elite commercial maize varieties without the slow, costly steps normally required to breed new traits into existing lines. By combining an improved CRISPR protein, targeted heat treatment after pollination, and a protein-stabilizing fusion tag, they raised editing success rates up to 33%, making precise crop improvement far more practical.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
A Robust Framework for Maize Elite Line Genome Editing Through Enhanced HI-Edit via LbCas12a Activity Optimization.
Haploid induction coupled with genome editing (HI-Edit) enables direct modification of commercial crop varieties, bypassing the need for trait introgression or direct transformation of elite lines ...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
Species Mentioned
Was this useful?
Want to tell us more? (optional)
Thanks for the note!
Something went wrong — please try again.
Too many submissions. Try again in an hour.
Gene editing removes 97% of celiac-triggering proteins from bread wheat
It could mean that people with celiac disease — roughly 1 in 100 worldwide — may one day safely eat bread made from real wheat, without sacrificing the taste...
Maize, also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout grass that produces cereal grain. The leafy stalk of the plant gives rise to male inflorescences or tassels which produce pollen, and female inflorescences called ears. The ears yield grain, known as kernels or seeds. In modern ...