A Method to Create Golden Hull Rice Biological Resources Using CRISPR/Cas9 System

Journal Article / 2018

Que, Zhiqun; Lu, Qineng; Liu, Xiaolin; Li, Shengqiang; Zeng, Huilan; Li, Rungen; Liu, Tao; Yan, Xiaoyu; Shen, Chunxiu

Rice chalcone isomerase gene OsCHI is a recessive gene that controls the color of rice hull. In order to obtain the OsCH/ mutants in rice, we used U3 promoter to drive the expression of OsCH/ sgRNA, and the corresponding CR1SPR/Cas9 genome editing vector was constructed. The recombinant plasmid was transferred to the rice cultivar Taipei309 by agrobacterium-mediated transformation. Sequencing of OsCH/ locus in T0 transgenic rice showed that four mutants were obtained, which included two homozygous deletion mutations and two heterozygous deletion muta- tions. Further analysis for the T0 mutants showed that almost all mutants exhibited obvious brown pigmentation in the panicle at heading stage and golden pigmentation in the panicle at maturity. The successful OsCH/ editing not only provided a series of rice golden hull mutants but also proved that CRISPR/Cas9 is a powerful mean for rice genetic engineering in scientific and agricultural applications, which has theoretical and practical significance for production of golden hull two-line sterile rice.