Δ12-fatty acid dehydrogenase (FAD2) is the essential enzyme responsible for catalyzing the formation of linoleic acid from oleic acid. CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology has been an essential tool for molecular breeding in soybeans. To evaluate the most suitable type of gene editing in soybean fatty acid synthesis metabolism, this study selected five crucial enzyme genes of the soybean FAD2 gene family-GmFAD2-1A, GmFAD2-1B, GmFAD2-2A, GmFAD2-2B, and GmFAD2-2C-and created a CRISPR/Cas9-mediated single gene editing vector system. The results of Sanger sequencing showed that 72 transformed plants positive for T1 generation were obtained using Agrobacterium-mediated transformation, of which 43 were correctly edited plants, with the highest editing efficiency of 88% for GmFAD2-2A. The phenotypic analysis revealed that the oleic acid content of the progeny of GmFAD2-1A gene-edited plants had a higher increase of 91.49% when compared to the control JN18, and the rest of the gene-edited plants in order were GmFAD2-2A, GmFAD2-1B, GmFAD2-2C, and GmFAD2-2B. The analysis of gene editing type has indicated that base deletions greater than 2bp were the predominant editing type in all editing events. This study provides ideas for the optimization of CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology and the development of new tools for precise base editing in the future.
Keywords: CRISPR/Cas9; GmFAD2; editing vector; fatty acids; soybean.