Disruption of three polyamine uptake transporter genes in rice by CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing confers tolerance to herbicide paraquat

Yu-Shu Lyu; Li-Miao Cao; Wen-Qian Huang; Jian-Xiang Liu; Hai-Ping Lu

doi:10.1007/s42994-022-00075-4

Disruption of three polyamine uptake transporter genes in rice by CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing confers tolerance to herbicide paraquat

aBIOTECH. 2022 Jun 25;3(2):140-145. doi: 10.1007/s42994-022-00075-4. eCollection 2022 Jun.

Authors

Yu-Shu Lyu¹, Li-Miao Cao², Wen-Qian Huang², Jian-Xiang Liu¹, Hai-Ping Lu¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Plant Physiology and Biochemistry, College of Life Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058 China.
² State Key Laboratory of Rice Biology, Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Resources, Institute of Crop Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058 China.

Abstract

Weeds are a major biotic constraint that can cause dramatic crop production losses. Herbicide technology has been widely used by farmers as the most cost-effective weed control measure, and development of new strategy to improve herbicide tolerance in plants is urgently needed. The CRISPR/Cas9-based genome editing tool has been used in diverse applications related to agricultural technology for crop improvement. Here we identified three polyamine uptake transporter (PUT) genes in rice that are homologous to the Arabidopsis AtRMV1. We successfully demonstrate that CRISPR/Cas9-targeted mutagenesis of OsPUT1/2/3 greatly improves paraquat resistance in rice without obvious yield penalty. Therefore, manipulation of these loci could be valuable for producing transgene-free rice with improved herbicide resistance in future.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42994-022-00075-4.

Keywords: CRISPR/Cas9; OsPUTs; Paraquat; Rice.