Double-cropped soybean (Glycine max) is often associated with restricted vegetative growth before flowering. This problem could be overcome by delaying the flowering of the plants. Recently a team of Chinese scientists from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences with Yupeng Cai as a leading researcher published a paper in Plant Biotechnology Journal regarding the use of CRISP/Cas9 for performing targeted mutagenesis in GmFT2a – an integrator gene in the photoperiod flowering pathway in soybean. The authors used three sgRNA-Cas9 vectors targeting different sites of the GmFT2a gene for soybean transformation. Successful mutagenesis was proved by sequencing of all target sites. T1 plants homozygous for null allele of the GmFT2a gene showed delayed flowering under natural conditions in Beijing, China. The mutagenized loci were shown to be stably inherited in T2. The team was also able to select transgene-free lines which were homozygous for the engineered null allele of the GmFT2a gene without containing the transgenic elements available in T1 and T2 generations.
Source: Crop Biotech Update
Reference article:
Cai, Y., Chen, L., Liu, X., Guo, C., Sun, S., Wu, C., Jiang, B., Han, T. and Hou, W. (2017), CRISPR/Cas9-mediated targeted mutagenesis of GmFT2a delays flowering time in soybean. Plant Biotechnol J. Accepted Author Manuscript. doi:10.1111/pbi.12758
