Genome Editing for Resistance to Insect Pests: An Emerging Tool for Crop Improvement

Abstract

Plants are challenged incessantly by several biotic and abiotic stresses during their entire growth period. As with other biotic stress factors, insect pests have also posed serious concerns related to yield losses due to which agricultural productivity is at stake. In plants, trait modification for crop improvement was initiated with breeding approaches followed by genetic engineering. However, stringent regulatory policies for risk assessment and lack of social acceptance for genetically modified crops worldwide have incited researchers toward alternate strategies. Genome engineering or genome editing has emerged as a new breeding technique with the ability to edit the genomes of plants, animals, microbes, and human beings. Several gene editing strategies are being executed with continuous emergence of variants. The scientific community has unraveled the utility of various editing tools from endonucleases to CRISPR/Cas in several aspects related to plant growth, development, and mitigation of stresses. The categorical focus on the development of tools and techniques including designing of binary vectors to facilitate ease in genome engineering are being pursued. Through this Review, we embark upon the conglomeration of various genome editing strategies that can be and are being used to design insect pest resistance in plants. Case studies and novel crop-based approaches that reiterate the successful use of these tools in insects as well as in plants are highlighted. Further, the Review also provides implications for the requirement of a specific regulatory framework and risk assessment of the edited crops. Genome editing toward insect pest management is here to stay, provided uncompromising efforts are made toward the identification of amiable target genes.

Identification of Susceptibility Genes in Castanea sativa and Their Transcription Dynamics following Pathogen Infection

“…The emergent CRISPR/Cas9 technology is expected to play a key role in future crop breeding as it allows highly efficient gene editing and generates genetic changes indistinguishable from those arising spontaneously in nature or through conventional breeding [ 61 ]. Several examples of edited plants resistant to fungal pathogens have been described [ 62 , 63 ]. For example, genome editing was successfully applied to knock out mlo S-genes, leading to Powdery mildew (PM) resistance [ 44 , 64 , 65 , 66 ].…”

An Apical Meristem-Targeted in planta Transformation Method for the Development of Transgenics in Flax (Linum usitatissimum): Optimization and Validation

“…In planta transformation strategies aid in the development of transgenic plants by completely circumventing tissue culture steps and have cardinal contributions in plant biotechnology ( Kesiraju and Sreevathsa, 2017 ; Karthik et al, 2020 ). Despite efforts toward demonstration of the non-tissue culture based transformation in flax ( Bastaki and Cullis, 2014 ; Maher et al, 2020 ; Majumder et al, 2020 ; Tyagi et al, 2020 ; Zlobin et al, 2020 ), development of large-scale stable transgenics for functional genomics study in flax is still lacking. The present study provides proof for the optimization of an apical meristem-targeted transformation strategy in flax and, hitherto, development of stable transgenics.…”

Advances in Editing Silkworms (Bombyx mori) Genome by Using the CRISPR-Cas System

“…CRISPR-Cas9 is currently used in multiple research fields, such as agriculture (editing of various agricultural plant genomes or pest insect's genome) [55][56][57], biotechnology, food industry, and medicine (modeling diseases using HeLa cells, deciphering HIV infection mechanisms, using various experimental models, such as Danio rerio to tackle cancer and neurological diseases, etc.) [58,59], just to mention a few (Figure 1) [60].…”