Precision genome engineering through adenine base editing in plants

Abstract

The recent development of adenine base editors (ABEs) has enabled efficient and precise A-to-G base conversions in higher eukaryotic cells. Here, we show that plant-compatible ABE systems can be successfully applied to protoplasts of Arabidopsis thaliana and Brassica napus through transient transfection, and to individual plants through Agrobacterium-mediated transformation to obtain organisms with desired phenotypes. Targeted, precise A-to-G substitutions generated a single amino acid change in the FT protein or mis-splicing of the PDS3 RNA transcript, and we could thereby obtain transgenic plants with late-flowering and albino phenotypes, respectively. Our results provide ‘proof of concept’ for in planta ABE applications that can lead to induced neo-functionalization or altered mRNA splicing, opening up new avenues for plant genome engineering and biotechnology. © 2018 The Author(s