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Nanotechnology to advance CRISPR–Cas genetic engineering of plants

Abstract

CRISPR–Cas genetic engineering of plants holds tremendous potential for providing food security, battling biotic and abiotic crop stresses caused by climate change, and for environmental remediation and sustainability. Since the discovery of CRISPR–Cas technology, its usefulness has been demonstrated widely, including for genome editing in plants. Despite the revolutionary nature of genome-editing tools and the notable progress that these tools have enabled in plant genetic engineering, there remain many challenges for CRISPR applications in plant biotechnology. Nanomaterials could address some of the most critical challenges of CRISPR genome editing in plants through improvements in cargo delivery, species independence, germline transformation and gene editing efficiency. This Perspective identifies major barriers preventing CRISPR-mediated plant genetic engineering from reaching its full potential, and discusses ways that nanoparticle technologies can lower or eliminate these barriers. We also describe advances that are needed in nanotechnology to facilitate and accelerate plant genome editing. Timely advancement of the application of CRISPR technologies in plant engineering is crucial for our ability to feed and sustain the growing human population under a changing global climate.

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Fig. 1: CRISPR–Cas reagent delivery to diverse plant species, cells and organelles.
Fig. 2: Schematic showing nanomaterials developed for plant biotechnology, delivery and genetic engineering.

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Acknowledgements

We thank W. Dwyer and J. Krupp for helpful discussions. G.S.D. is funded by the Schlumberger Foundation Faculty for the Future Program and the Resnick Sustainability Institute. C.T.J. acknowledges the support of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships Program. We acknowledge support of a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface (CASI) (M.P.L.), a Beckman Foundation Young Investigator Award (M.P.L.), a USDA AFRI award (M.P.L.), a USDA NIFA award (M.P.L.), a CZI deep tissue imaging award (M.P.L.), and an FFAR New Innovator Award (M.P.L.). M.P.L. is a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigator. This research was supported, in part, by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Genomic Science Program grant no. DE-DE-SC0020366 (S.Y.R., J.C.M., M.P.L. and D.W.E.) and DE-SC0018277 (S.Y.R.), the DOE Joint BioEnergy Institute (http://www.jbei.org) supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, through contract DE-AC02-05CH11231 between Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (J.C.M.) and the US Department of Energy, and the US National Science Foundation grants IOS-1546838 (S.Y.R.) and MCB-1617020 (S.Y.R.).

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Correspondence to Gozde S. Demirer, Seung Y. Rhee, Jenny C. Mortimer or Markita P. Landry.

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Peer review information Nature Nanotechnology thanks Sandeep Kumar, Neena Mitter, Yiping Qi and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Demirer, G.S., Silva, T.N., Jackson, C.T. et al. Nanotechnology to advance CRISPR–Cas genetic engineering of plants. Nat. Nanotechnol. 16, 243–250 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-021-00854-y

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