Fine-tuning quantitative traits for continuous subtle phenotypes is highly advantageous. A research team led by Prof. GAO Caixia at Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of Chinese Academy of Sciences and College of Advanced Agricultural Sciences of University of Chinese Academy of Sciences engineered the highly conserved upstream open reading frame (uORF) of FvebZIPs1.1 in strawberry (Fragaria vesca), using base editor A3A-PBE. Seven novel alleles are generated. Sugar content of the homozygous T1 mutant lines is 33.9–83.6% higher than that of the wild-type. We also recover a series of transgene-free mutants with 35 novel genotypes containing a continuum of sugar content. All the novel genotypes could be immediately fixed in subsequent generations by asexual reproduction. Genome editing coupled with asexual reproduction offers tremendous opportunities for quantitative trait improvement.
This work was published in Genome Biology; post-doctoral fellow XING Sinian in Prof. GAO’s team and associate researcher CHEN Kunling contributed equally to the work; Prof. GAO Caixia is the corresponding author.
