CRISPR/Cas system: A revolutionary tool for crop improvement

Abstract

World's population is elevating at an alarming rate thus, the rising demands of producing crops with better adaptability to biotic and abiotic stresses, superior nutritional as well as morphological qualities, and generation of high‐yielding varieties have led to encourage the development of new plant breeding technologies. The availability and easy accessibility of genome sequences for a number of crop plants as well as the development of various genome editing technologies such as zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs), transcription activator‐like effector nucleases (TALENs) has opened up possibilities to develop new varieties of crop plants with superior desirable traits. However, these approaches has limitation of being more expensive as well as having complex steps and time‐consuming. The CRISPR/Cas genome editing system has been intensively studied for allowing versatile target‐specific modifications of crop genome that fruitfully aid in the generation of novel varieties. It is an advanced and promising technology with the potential to meet hunger needs and contribute to food production for the ever‐growing human population. This review summarizes the usage of novel CRISPR/Cas genome editing tool for targeted crop improvement in stress resistance, yield, quality and nutritional traits in the desired crop plants.

Synthetic biology for Monascus: From strain breeding to industrial production

“…The CRISPR/Cas system has become a key gene editing technology in the biological field due to its ease of operation and high editing efficiency. [73] And the CRISPR-Cas system offers numerous advantages for functional genomics research in filamentous fungi. [74] However, the low probability of HR in filamentous fungi makes them prone to the random integration of foreign DNA at unintended genomic loci, resulting in the off-target phenomenon.…”