CRISPR-Cas system: a precise tool for plant genome editing

CRISPR/Cas genome editing in plants: mechanisms, applications, and overcoming bottlenecks

The CRISPR/Cas systems have emerged as transformative tools for precisely manipulating plant genomes and enhancement. It has provided unparalleled applications from modifying the plant genomes to resistant enhancement. This review manuscript summarises the mechanism, application, and current challenges in the CRISPR/Cas genome editing technology. It addresses the molecular mechanisms of different Cas genes, elucidating their applications in various plants through crop improvement, disease resistance, and trait improvement. The advent of the CRISPR/Cas systems has enabled researchers to precisely modify plant genomes through gene knockouts, knock-ins, and gene expression modulation. Despite these successes, the CRISPR/Cas technology faces challenges, including off-target effects, Cas toxicity, and efficiency. In this manuscript, we also discuss these challenges and outline ongoing strategies employed to overcome these challenges, including the development of novel CRISPR/Cas variants with improved specificity and specific delivery methods for different plant species. The manuscript will conclude by addressing the future perspectives of the CRISPR/Cas technology in plants. Although this review manuscript is not conclusive, it aims to provide immense insights into the current state and future potential of CRISPR/Cas in sustainable and secure plant production.

Synthetic Biology in Plants, a Boon for Coming Decades

Recently an enormous expansion of knowledge is seen in various disciplines of science. This surge of information has given rise to concept of interdisciplinary fields, which has resulted in emergence of newer research domains, one of them is 'Synthetic Biology' (SynBio). It captures basics from core biology and integrates it with concepts from the other areas of study such as chemical, electrical, and computational sciences. The essence of synthetic biology is to rewire, re-program, and re-create natural biological pathways, which are carried through genetic circuits. A genetic circuit is a functional assembly of basic biological entities (DNA, RNA, proteins), created using typical design, built, and test cycles. These circuits allow scientists to engineer nearly all biological systems for various useful purposes. The development of sophisticated molecular tools, techniques, genomic programs, and ease of nucleic acid synthesis have further fueled several innovative application of synthetic biology in areas like molecular medicines, pharmaceuticals, biofuels, drug discovery, metabolomics, developing plant biosensors, utilization of prokaryotic systems for metabolite production, and CRISPR/Cas9 in the crop improvement. These applications have largely been dominated by utilization of prokaryotic systems. However, newer researches have indicated positive growth of SynBio for the eukaryotic systems as well. This paper explores advances of synthetic biology in the plant field by elaborating on its core components and potential applications. Here, we have given a comprehensive idea of designing, development, and utilization of synthetic biology in the improvement of the present research state of plant system.