Insights to improve the plant nutrient transport by CRISPR/Cas system

Abstract

We need to improve food production to feed the ever growing world population especially in a changing climate. Nutrient deficiency in soils is one of the primary bottlenecks affecting the crop production both in developed and developing countries. Farmers are forced to apply synthetic fertilizers to improve the crop production to meet the demand. Understanding the mechanism of nutrient transport is helpful to improve the nutrient-use efficiency of crops and promote the sustainable agriculture. Many transporters involved in the acquisition, export and redistribution of nutrients in plants are characterized. In these studies, heterologous systems like yeast and Xenopus were most frequently used to study the transport function of plant nutrient transporters. CRIPSR/Cas system introduced recently has taken central stage for efficient genome editing in diverse organisms including plants. In this review, we discuss the key nutrient transporters involved in the acquisition and redistribution of nutrients from soil. We draw insights on the possible application CRISPR/Cas system for improving the nutrient transport in plants by engineering key residues of nutrient transporters, transcriptional regulation of nutrient transport signals, engineering motifs in promoters and transcription factors. CRISPR-based engineering of plant nutrient transport not only helps to study the process in native plants with conserved regulatory system but also aid to develop non-transgenic crops with better nutrient use-efficiency. This will reduce the application of synthetic fertilizers and promote the sustainable agriculture strengthening the food and nutrient security.

Keywords: CRISPR/Cas system; Genome editing; Heterologous system; Membrane transporters; Nutrient transport; Plant nutrients; Transcriptional regulation.