Chapter 9 - CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing in medicinal and aromatic plants: developments and applications

Abstract

Precise and straightforward methods to edit the plant genome have always been a challenging area so as to provide more efficient ways for a meaningful change in the genome. The recent technique of genome editing by Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats/CRISPR and its associated Cas9 protein (CRISPR/Cas9) have emerged as one of the most suitable and promising tool for precise genome editing. CRISPR-Cas9 system introduces small heritable mutations in the genome of an organism, which is important for pathway elucidation of secondary metabolites and quality improvement, and thus provides a new method for the research on medicinal plants. The use of CRISPR/Cas9 in medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) has been limited to few medicinal plant species due to lack of availability of sufficient sequence information in many MAPs. This article briefly introduces the CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing system and the present status of applicability of CRISPR/Cas9 in MAPs is discussed along with the challenges and potential applications in the research of medicinal plants, including functional genomics studies, secondary metabolism, and synthetic biology research of important active components and molecular-breeding research.