Plant genome editing, particularly CRISPR-Cas biotechnologies, has rapidly evolved and drawn enormous attention all around the world in the last decade. The cutting-edge technologies have had substantial impact on precise genome editing for manipulating gene expression, stacking gene mutations, and improving crop agronomic traits. Following the global trends, investigations on CRISPR-Cas have been thriving in Australia, especially in agriculture sciences. Importantly, CRISPR-edited plants, classified as SDN-1 organisms (SDN: site-directed nuclease), have been given a green light in Australia, with regulatory bodies indicating they will not be classified as a genetically modified organism (GMO) if no foreign DNA is present in an edited plant. As a result, genome-edited products would not attract the onerous regulation required for the introduction of a GMO, which could mean more rapid deployment of new varieties and products that could be traded freely in Australia, and potentially to export markets. In the present review, we discuss the current status and prospects of plant genome editing in Australia by highlighting several species of interest. Using these species as case studies, we discuss the priorities and potential of plant genome editing, as well as the remaining challenges.
Background Sugar content is critically important in determining sugar crop productivity. However, improvement in sugar content has been stagnant among sugar crops for decades. Sorghum, especially sweet sorghum with high biomass, shown great potential for biofuel, has lower sugar content than sugarcane. To enhance sugar content, the sucrose isomerase (SI) gene, driven by stem-specific promoters (A2 or LSG) with a vacuole-targetted signal peptide, was transformed into the sorghum inbred line (T×430). Results The study demonstrated that transgenic lines of grain sorghum, containing 50–60% isomaltulose, accumulated up to eightfold (1000 mM) more total sugar than the control T×430 did (118 mM) in stalks of T0 generation. Subsequently, the elite engineered lines (A5, and LSG9) were crossed with sweet sorghum (Rio, and R9188). Total sugar contents (over 750 mM), were notably higher in F1, and F2 progenies than the control Rio (480 mM). The sugar contents of the engineered lines (over 750 mM), including T0, T1, F1, and F2, are surprisingly higher than that of the field-grown sugarcane (normal range 600–700 mmol/L). Additionally, analysis of physiological characterization demonstrated that the superior progenies had notably higher rates of photosynthesis, sucrose transportation, and sink strength than the controls. Conclusions The genetic engineering approach has dramatically enhanced total sugar content in grain sorghum (T0, and T1) and hybrid sorghum (F1, and F2), demonstrating that sorghum can accumulate as high or higher sugar content than sugarcane. This research illustrates that the SI gene has enormous potential on improvement of sugar content in sorghum, particularly in hybirds and sweet sorghum. The substantial increase on sugar content would lead to significant financial benefits for industrial utilization. This study could have a substantial impact on renewable bioenergy. More importantly, our results demonstrated that the phenotype of high sugar content is inheritable and shed light on improvement for other sugar crops.
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