Mini-Review: Transgenerational CRISPR/Cas9 Gene Editing in Plants.

CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing has been used extensively in a wide variety of plant species. Creation of loss-of-function alleles, promoter variants and mutant collections are a few of the many uses of genome editing. In a typical workflow for sexually reproducing species, plants are generated that contain an integrated CRISPR/Cas9 transgene. After editing of the gene of interest, T-DNA null segregants can be identified in the next generation that contain only the desired edit. However, maintained presence of the CRISPR/Cas9 transgene and continued editing in the subsequent generations offer a range of applications for model plants and crops. In this review, we define transgenerational gene editing (TGE) as the continued editing of CRISPR/Cas9 after a genetic cross. We discuss the concept of TGE, summarize the current main applications, and highlight special cases to illustrate the importance of TGE for plant genome editing research and breeding.
Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
(Copyright © 2022 Impens, Jacobs, Nelissen, Inzé and Pauwels.)