Abstract
The future of genome editing in plants differs from how it is used today. For both research and product development, we need to think beyond the creation of simple single-nucleotide polymorphisms and short deletions in genes. We believe that the future of genome editing in plants involves mimicking the natural evolutionary processes that have shaped plant genomes and been the target of artificial selection during crop domestication and improvement. This includes programming large structural variations (insertions, duplications, deletions, inversions and translocations) and controlling plant recombination and endogenous transposable elements that naturally reshape plant genomes. The key is that genome editing will be used to reshape plant genomes in a manner that could have happened naturally, but now these changes can be directed rapidly in the laboratory.
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Fig. 1: Today’s use of CRISPR–Cas to generate small-scale indels at or near genes.
Fig. 2: Key examples of medium-scale SV induced by genome editing.
Fig. 3: Examples of large-scale SV induced by genome editing.
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Acknowledgements
R.K.S. is supported by United States National Science Foundation grants IOS-2149964 and MCB-2230587. H.P. is supported by the Reinhard Koselleck Project Pu137/24-1 of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
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Authors and Affiliations
Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, St. Louis, MO, USA
Larry Gilbertson & R. Keith Slotkin
Department of Molecular Biology, Joseph Gottlieb Kölreuter Institute for Plant Sciences, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany
Holger Puchta
Division of Biological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA
R. Keith Slotkin
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Larry Gilbertson
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R.K.S. conceived the project. R.K.S., H.P. and L.G. wrote the manuscript.
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Gilbertson, L., Puchta, H. & Slotkin, R.K. The future of genome editing in plants. Nat. Plants (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-025-01956-4
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Received:03 October 2024
Accepted:26 February 2025
Published:01 April 2025
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-025-01956-4
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