Biotech Updates

Development of Gene-Specific Rice Mutants via AvrXa23-based TALENs

February 8, 2017

Transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) are increasingly used as a powerful tool for genome editing in a variety of organisms. Previous studies have cloned the gene avrXa23 from Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae and developed an AvrXa23-based assembly system for TALENs. Fu-jun Wang of the Chinese Academy of Agriculture Sciences used TALENs to induce mutagenesis of rice ethylene response factor (ERF) transcription factor OsERF922 to test the gene-editing efficiency of AvrXa23-based TALENs system.

A pair of TALENs (T-KJ9/KJ10) was assembled and then used for rice transformation. The team observed targeting somatic mutagenesis frequency of 15.0% in transgenic rice calli and obtained two mutant plants with nucleotide deletion or insertion at the designer target region. These results show that the AvrXa23-based TALENs system can be used for site-specific genome editing in rice.

For more on this study, read the article in the Journal of Integrative Agriculture.