Fixation of hybrid vigor in rice:synthetic apomixis generated by genome editing

作     者：Kejian Wang Kejian Wang

作者机构：State Key Laboratory of Rice BiologyChina National Rice Research InstituteChinese Academy of Agricultural SciencesHangzhou 310006China 

出 版 物：《aBIOTECH》 (生物技术通报（英文版）)

年 卷 期：2020年第1卷第1期

页      面：15-20页

核心收录：

学科分类：0710[理学-生物学] 09[农学] 0901[农学-作物学] 0836[工学-生物工程] 

基　　金：This study was supported by the Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. 

主　　题：Apomixis Heterosis Hybrid vigor Genome editing 

摘      要：Apomixis is an asexual reproduction process in which clonal seeds are formed without meiosis and fertilization.Because of its potential in permanently preserving hybrid vigor,apomixis has attracted a great deal of interests from plant biologists and the seed industry.However,despite of decades of effort,introgression of apomixis traits from wild relatives into major crops has remained unsuccessful.Therefore,synthetic apomixis has been proposed as an alternative to fix hybrid vigor.In this article,I present the development of the MiMe(Mitosis instead of Meiosis),which turns meiosis into mitosis and leads to the production of clonal gametes.Apomixis-like clonal seeds are generated when MiMe plants are crossed to special genome elimination lines,which contain an altered centromere-specific histone 3(CENH3).Furthermore,induction of haploid plants from egg cells can be achieved by either egg cell-specific expression of BABY BOOM1(BBM1),or disruption of MATRILINEAL(MTL)using CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology.Synthetic apomixis is established and clonal seeds are produced by simultaneous engineering MiMe with altering BBM1 expression or MTL disruption.Finally,I discuss how to further improve the apomixis strategy and its applications in crop breeding.