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Base editing in rice: current progress, advances, limitations, and future perspectives

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Abstract

Key message

Base editing is one of the promising genome editing tools for generating single-nucleotide changes in rice genome.

Abstract

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is an important staple food crop, feeding half of the population around the globe. Developing new rice varieties with desirable agronomic traits is necessary for sustaining global food security. The use of genome editing technologies for developing rice varieties is pre-requisite in the present scenario. Among the genome editing technologies developed for rice crop improvement, base editing technology has emerged as an efficient and reliable tool for precise genome editing in rice plants. Base editing technology utilizes either adenosine or cytidine base editor for precise editing at the target region. A base editor (adenosine or cytidine) is a fusion of catalytically inactive CRISPR/Cas9 domain and adenosine or cytidine deaminase domain. In this review, authors have discussed the different adenine and cytosine base editors developed so far for precise genome editing of rice via base editing technology. We address the current progress, advances, limitations, as well as future perspectives of the base editing technology for rice crop improvement.

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Acknowledgements

This review work did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agronomy, IFAS, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Rajesh Yarra

  2. Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, India

    Lingaraj Sahoo

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  1. Rajesh Yarra
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  2. Lingaraj Sahoo
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RY and LS writing—original draft preparation; RY collected the back ground information.

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Correspondence to Lingaraj Sahoo.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Communicated by Günther Hahne.

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Yarra, R., Sahoo, L. Base editing in rice: current progress, advances, limitations, and future perspectives. Plant Cell Rep 40, 595–604 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-020-02656-3

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