New CRISPR tool makes bigger, cleaner edits in sugarcane
Ali Q, Trujillo C, Altpeter F
Crispr
Sugarcane's genome is so tangled (with many duplicated chromosome sets) that breeding better varieties has been painfully slow, and this new editing trick could speed up improvements to a crop behind much of the world's sugar and biofuel.
Sugarcane carries way more copies of its genes than most plants, which makes it extremely hard to breed or edit precisely. Researchers tried a gene-editing tool called Cas12a, paired it with a helper protein that chews up DNA ends, and found the combo created much bigger, more effective deletions when switching off a gene that controls leaf color. It's the first time this particular editing tool has worked in sugarcane, giving breeders a new way to tweak traits in a notoriously stubborn plant.
Key Findings
LbCas12a-RRV outperformed LbCas12a-R, achieving overall editing efficiencies of 31-85% in sugarcane's lw1 gene
Co-expressing mouse TREX2 enzyme shifted mutations toward larger deletions, boosting deletions of 51+ base pairs roughly 7-fold in both Cas12a variants
Capillary electrophoresis genotyping proved a cheaper, faster alternative to next-generation sequencing for predicting editing efficiency and deletion size
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists successfully used a precision gene-editing tool called CRISPR/Cas12a to edit sugarcane for the first time, and by adding a helper enzyme, they made the edits bigger and more reliable. This opens a new path for breeding better sugarcane despite its notoriously complicated genetics.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
mTREX2 co-expression promotes large deletions in CRISPR/Cas12a editing of the highly polyploid sugarcane genome.
The LbCas12ai-mTREX2 system enhances large deletions, and the LbCas12ai-RRV enables efficient editing of lw1 in sugarcane. Sugarcane (Saccharum spp. hybrids) is a major feedstock for biofuel produc...
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