Skip to main content
ARS Home » Plains Area » Manhattan, Kansas » Center for Grain and Animal Health Research » Hard Winter Wheat Genetics Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #393265
Research Project: Genetic Improvement of Biotic and Abiotic Stress Tolerance and Nutritional Quality in Hard Winter Wheat

Location: Hard Winter Wheat Genetics Research

Title: Development and optimization of a Barley stripe mosaic virus (BSMV)-mediated gene editing system to improve Fusarium head blight (FHB) resistance in wheat

Author
item CHEN, HUI - Kansas State University
item SU, ZHENQI - Kansas State University
item TIAN, BIN - Kansas State University
item LIU, YANG - Kansas State University
item PANG, YUHUI - Kansas State University
item KAVETSKYI, VOLODYMYR - Kansas State University
item TRICK, HAROLD - Kansas State University
item Bai, Guihua

Submitted to: Plant Biotechnology Journal
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/29/2022
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: Fusarium head blight (FHB) is a devastating disease in wheat and gene editing can provide an effective tool to create new sources of resistance. However, genome editing uses gene transformation to deliver CRISPR/Cas9 and gRNA into wheat plants that can be done only in a few cultivars due to low transformation rates in most wheat cultivars. Here we developed and optimized a new Barley stripe mosaic virus (BSMV)-mediated gRNA delivery system without using gene transformation to produce transgene-free mutant plants. We edited a major FHB-susceptible gene called TaHRC in two FHB-susceptible wheat cultivars and demonstrated that the BSMV-mediated gene editing trait is heritable in different genetic backgrounds and the editing system can potentially be used to mutate the TaHRC susceptible allele to improve FHB resistance in wheat.

Technical Abstract: Fusarium head blight (FHB) is a devastating disease in wheat that causes million dollars of wheat yield losses annually in the U.S. Recently we demonstrated that wheat carries an FHB susceptibility gene and knocking out the susceptibility gene increased FHB resistance. This suggested that manipulating susceptibility genes using gene editing may open a new avenue to create new sources of FHB resistance. However, wheat genome editing uses gene transformation to deliver CRISPR/Cas9 and gRNA editing machinery into plants, and most wheat genotypes have low rates of gene transformation. Therefore genome editing can not be used in practical wheat breeding. In this study, we developed a new Barley stripe mosaic virus (BSMV)-mediated gRNA delivery system that bypasses the gene transformation procedure to edit the susceptible allele of Fhb1, a major FHB resistance gene encoding histidine-rich calcium binding protein (TaHRC). We demonstrated that the BSMV-mediated edited trait is heritable in different genetic backgrounds and can be used to manipulate the TaHRC susceptibility allele to improve FHB resistance in wheat. Also editing efficiency has been improved by using floral dip agroinfiltration and adding RNA mobility sequences to the gRNA in the viral vectors. This new editing system can potentially be used to create new sources of resistance to FHB and other diseases in wheat breeding and to validate gene function in gene cloning studies.