Modern Techniques Used in Gene Cloning and Gene Editing to Raise Transgenic Plants
Abstract
Modern agriculture targets the improvement of crop yield, nutritional value, and resistance against both biotic and abiotic factors. Genetic modifications are done through mutagenesis techniques. Traditional methods that involved physical or chemical agents lacked specificity and caused unintended mutations at random sites within the genome. But significant progress has been made in crop breeding with recent advancements in genome editing. The introduction of site-directed nucleases to edit genes has significantly reduced off-target effects and enabled precise gene editing. A few limitations that were observed in initial gene-editing tools like Zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs) and Transcription activatorlike effector nucleases (TALENs) were overcome in the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR/Cas) mechanism. The discovery of the CRISPR/Cas system proved to be a game-changer in the field of genome editing. As a result, it is extensively used in plant transformation to analyze gene function and improve desired characteristics. Significant advances have been made in understanding the CRISPR/Cas mechanism, leading to the development of variants that have further advanced the concept and opened new avenues for rapidly manipulating plant genomes. Thus, modern breeding research has benefited greatly from the introduction of gene-editing technologies.
