Applications of CRISPR technology in studying plant-pathogen interactions: overview and perspective

Gokul Gosavi,Yongjie Kuang,Xueping Zhou,Daqi Yan,Bin Ren,Huanbin Zhou,Fang Yan

doi:10.1186/s42483-020-00060-z

Abstract

Targeted genome editing technology is becoming one of the most important genetic tools and widely employed in the plant pathology community. In recent years, CRISPR (Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) and CRISPR-associated proteins discovered in the adaptive immune system in prokaryotes have been successfully reprogrammed into various genome editing tools and have caught the attention of the scientific community due to its simplicity, high efficiency, versatility. Here, we provide an overview of various CRISPR/Cas systems, the derived tools and their applications in plant pathology. This review highlights the advantages of knocking-out techniques to target major susceptibility genes and negative regulators of host defense pathways for gaining resistance to bacterial, fungal and viral pathogens in model and crop plants through utilizing the CRISPR/Cas-based tools. Besides, we discuss the possible strategies of employing the CRISPR-based tools for both fundamental studies on plant-pathogen interactions and molecular crop breeding towards the improvement of resistance in the future.

Highlights

The world’s population will reach at least 9.8 billion by 2050, more and more food is needed to provide sufficient nutrients for the rising populations
It’s well known that plant and pathogen are locked in a battle of recognition and evasion, in which a multilayered defense system including both pathogenassociated molecular patterns (PAMPs) -triggered immunity (PTI) and effector-triggered immunity (ETI) has evolved in plants to fight against invading pathogens for survival
Conclusions and future directions Today, the Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/Cas system is the most extensively used technology for targeted genomic editing compared to other GE technologies, and has been developed and applied in a large number of host plants and plant pathogens for dissecting the molecular mechanisms underlying the plant-pathogen interactions and for improving host resistance against bacteria, fungi, oomycetes, DNA viruses, and RNA viruses

Summary

Introduction

The world’s population will reach at least 9.8 billion by 2050, more and more food is needed to provide sufficient nutrients for the rising populations. Further extensive investigations of host-pathogen interactions, especially the identification of key targets related to defense responses in plants would provide a great opportunity to engineer broad-spectrum and durable resistance in many crops.

Results

Conclusion