Expanding the CRISPR Toolbox in Using SpCas9-NG Variant and Application for Gene and Base Editing in Crops.

Genome editing has become a major tool for both functional studies and plant breeding in several species. Besides generating knockouts through the classical CRISPR-Cas9 system, recent development of CRISPR base editing holds great and exciting opportunities for the production of gain-of-function mutants. The PAM requirement is a strong limitation for CRISPR technologies such as base editing, because the base substitution mainly occurs in a small edition window. As precise single amino-acid substitution can be responsible for functions associated to some domains or agronomic traits, development of Cas9 variants with relaxed PAM recognition is of upmost importance for gene function analysis and plant breeding. Recently, the SpCas9-NG variant that recognizes the NGN PAM has been successfully tested in plants, mainly in monocotyledon species. In this work, we studied the efficiency of SpCas9-NG in the model moss and two crops ( and ) for both classical CRISPR-generated gene knock-out and cytosine base editing. We showed that the SpCas9-NG greatly expands the scope of genome editing by allowing the targeting of non-canonical NGT and NGA PAMs. The CRISPR toolbox developed in our study opens up new gene function analysis and plant breeding perspectives for model and crop plants.