AUTHOR=Impens Lennert , Jacobs Thomas B. , Nelissen Hilde , Inzé Dirk , Pauwels Laurens TITLE=Mini-Review: Transgenerational CRISPR/Cas9 Gene Editing in Plants JOURNAL=Frontiers in Genome Editing VOLUME=4 YEAR=2022 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/genome-editing/articles/10.3389/fgeed.2022.825042 DOI=10.3389/fgeed.2022.825042 ISSN=2673-3439 ABSTRACT=

CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing has been used extensively in a wide variety of plant species. Creation of loss-of-function alleles, promoter variants and mutant collections are a few of the many uses of genome editing. In a typical workflow for sexually reproducing species, plants are generated that contain an integrated CRISPR/Cas9 transgene. After editing of the gene of interest, T-DNA null segregants can be identified in the next generation that contain only the desired edit. However, maintained presence of the CRISPR/Cas9 transgene and continued editing in the subsequent generations offer a range of applications for model plants and crops. In this review, we define transgenerational gene editing (TGE) as the continued editing of CRISPR/Cas9 after a genetic cross. We discuss the concept of TGE, summarize the current main applications, and highlight special cases to illustrate the importance of TGE for plant genome editing research and breeding.