CRISPR-Cas12b enables efficient plant genome engineering

Meiling Ming; Qiurong Ren; Changtian Pan; Yao He; Yingxiao Zhang; Shishi Liu; Zhaohui Zhong; Jiaheng Wang; Aimee A Malzahn; Jun Wu; Xuelian Zheng; Yong Zhang; Yiping Qi

doi:10.1038/s41477-020-0614-6

CRISPR-Cas12b enables efficient plant genome engineering

Nat Plants. 2020 Mar;6(3):202-208. doi: 10.1038/s41477-020-0614-6. Epub 2020 Mar 9.

Authors

Meiling Ming^#^{1

2}, Qiurong Ren^#³, Changtian Pan^#¹, Yao He^#³, Yingxiao Zhang^#¹, Shishi Liu³, Zhaohui Zhong³, Jiaheng Wang³, Aimee A Malzahn¹, Jun Wu², Xuelian Zheng³, Yong Zhang⁴, Yiping Qi^{5

6}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
² Centre of Pear Engineering Technology Research, State Key Laboratory of Crop Genetics and Germplasm Enhancement, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China.
³ Department of Biotechnology, School of Life Science and Technology, Center for Informational Biology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China.
⁴ Department of Biotechnology, School of Life Science and Technology, Center for Informational Biology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China. zhangyong916@uestc.edu.cn.
⁵ Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA. yiping@umd.edu.
⁶ Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research, University of Maryland, Rockville, MD, USA. yiping@umd.edu.

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 32170285
DOI: 10.1038/s41477-020-0614-6

Abstract

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-Cas12b is a newly emerged genome engineering system. Here, we compared Cas12b from Alicyclobacillus acidoterrestris (Aac), Alicyclobacillus acidiphilus (Aa), Bacillus thermoamylovorans (Bth) and Bacillus hisashii (Bh) for genome engineering in rice, an important crop. We found AaCas12b was more efficient than AacCas12b and BthCas12b for targeted mutagenesis, which was further demonstrated in multiplexed genome editing. We also engineered the Cas12b systems for targeted transcriptional repression and activation. Our work establishes Cas12b as the third promising CRISPR system, after Cas9 and Cas12a, for plant genome engineering.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

Alicyclobacillus / genetics*
Bacillus / genetics*
CRISPR-Cas Systems*
Gene Editing*
Genome, Plant*
Oryza / genetics*
Plants, Genetically Modified / genetics