Genome Editing for Plasmodesmal Biology

Abstract

Plasmodesmata (PD) are cytoplasmic canals that facilitate intercellular communication and molecular exchange between adjacent plant cells. PD-associated proteins are considered as one of the foremost factors in regulating PD function that is critical for plant development and stress responses. Although its potential to be used for crop engineering is enormous, our understanding of PD biology was relatively limited to model plants, demanding further studies in crop systems. Recently developed genome editing techniques such as Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats/CRISPR associate protein (CRISPR/Cas) might confer powerful approaches to dissect the molecular function of PD components and to engineer elite crops. Here, we assess several aspects of PD functioning to underline and highlight the potential applications of CRISPR/Cas that provide new insight into PD biology and crop improvement.

Engineering drought and salinity tolerance traits in crops through CRISPR-mediated genome editing: Targets, tools, challenges, and perspectives

“…Symplastic transport occurs through the plasmodesmata ( Picard, 2003 ), and apoplastic transport is mediated by ion-specific transporter proteins ( Hall et al., 2006 ; Munns et al., 2012 ). Plasmodesmata are symplastic nanochannels that connect adjacent cells and allow the passive or active movement of several molecules, including Na + ions ( Iswanto et al., 2021 ). After activation of stress signaling, callose accumulation closes these nanochannels and regulates ion movement.…”

ROS-mediated plasmodesmal regulation requires a network of an Arabidopsis receptor-like kinase, calmodulin-like proteins, and callose synthases

“…Controlling the cell-to-cell movement via callose-mediated plasmodesmal regulation is one of the prevalent modes of action adopted by the plant immune system during stress ( Iswanto et al., 2021 ). Callose, a β-1,3-glucan, is synthesized and degraded dynamically at the plasmodesmata (PD) neck, which modulates PD pore size and regulates the diffusion of molecules and signals ( Kumar et al., 2015 ; Amsbury et al., 2018 ; Wu et al., 2018 ).…”

Engineering plant immune circuit: walking to the bright future with a novel toolbox

“…However, conventional methods have some disadvantages, such as a long production time, the need for large populations, labor‐intensive procedures, and a limited gene pool. Therefore, new genome editing techniques have been developed to facilitate plant breeding and increase its efficiency, such as oligonucleotide‐directed mutagenesis (ODM; Sauer et al ., 2016 ), transcription activator‐like effector nucleases (TALENs; Joung and Sander, 2013 ), zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs; Petolino, 2015 ), the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR‐associated (Cas) system (Cong et al ., 2013 ; Iswanto et al ., 2021a ; Jinek et al ., 2012 ; Shmakov et al ., 2017 ; Zetsche et al ., 2015 ), and modified versions on the CRISPR/Cas system, such as base editor and prime editor, according to the needs of the scientist (Anzalone et al ., 2019 ; Gaudelli et al ., 2017 ; Kang et al ., 2018 ; Lin et al ., 2020 ; Zou et al ., 2022 ). Compared to traditional breeding, these techniques allow researchers to rapidly make more precise genome changes to generate plants with desirable traits (Abdallah et al ., 2015 ).…”