Generation of Herbicide Tolerance Traits and a New Selectable Marker in Wheat Using Base-editing
    作者: Rui Zhang, Jinxing Liu, Zhuangzhuang Chai, Sha Chen, Yang Bai, Yuan Zong, Kunling Chen, Jiayang Li, Linjian Jiang and Caixia Gao
    刊物名称: Nature Plants
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    摘要:
    Developing herbicide tolerant (HT) varieties by genome editing holds great promise for addressing the worsening weed problems in wheat cultivation. Here we generated transgene-free wheat germplasms harboring HT mutations that confer tolerance to sulfonylurea-, imidazolinone- and aryloxyphenoxy propionate-type herbicides by base editing the acetolactate synthase (ALS) and acetyl-coenzyme A carboxylase (ACCase) genes. These stackable HT traits provide a potentially powerful tool for weed management. In addition, we found that base editing at the wheat ALS P174 codon (TaALS-P174) endowed wheat with sufficient resistance to nicosulfuron herbicide in MS growth medium to allow selection. When the TaALS-P174 editor was coupled with editors for other targets of interest, co-editing occurred in the nicosulfuron-resistant plants, and selection for resistance in growth medium enriched the frequency of coupled targets by several-fold. This selectable co-editing system has the potential to greatly bolster adoption of base editing for crop improvement applications.