Domestication of wild tomato is accelerated by genome editing

• Published in: Nature biotechnology Vol. 36; no. 12; pp. 1160 - 1163
• Main Authors: Li, Tingdong, Yang, Xinping, Yu, Yuan, Si, Xiaomin, Zhai, Xiawan, Zhang, Huawei, Dong, Wenxia, Gao, Caixia, Xu, Cao
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Nature Publishing Group US 01.12.2018; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 13/106; 13/109; 13/44; 38/22; 38/23; 38/70; 38/77; 42/109; 42/41; 42/44; 631/449; 631/61; Agriculture; Analysis; Ascorbic acid; Biodiversity; Bioinformatics; Biomedical Engineering/Biotechnology; Biomedicine; Biotechnology; brief-communication; CRISPR; Crop diseases; Crop improvement; Crop production; Developmental biology; Disease resistance; Domestication; Editing; Environmental quality; Fitness; Flowers & plants; Gene editing; Gene sequencing; Genes; Genetic aspects; Genetic diversity; Genome editing; Genomes; Genomics; Inbreeding; Laboratories; Life Sciences; Morphology; Mutation; Open reading frames; Organic acids; Phenotypes; Production management; Progeny; Regulatory sequences; Reproductive fitness; Salt tolerance; Tomato breeding; Tomatoes; Vitamin C; China
• ISSN: 1087-0156; 1546-1696; 1546-1696
• DOI: 10.1038/nbt.4273

Precise genome engineering of a handful of genes enables rapid domestication of wild tomato plants. Crop improvement by inbreeding often results in fitness penalties and loss of genetic diversity. We introduced desirable traits into four stress-tolerant wild-tomato accessions by using multiplex CRISPR–Cas9 editing of coding sequences, cis -regulatory regions or upstream open reading frames of genes associated with morphology, flower and fruit production, and ascorbic acid synthesis. Cas9-free progeny of edited plants had domesticated phenotypes yet retained parental disease resistance and salt tolerance.