Ensuring food security for an ever-growing global population while adapting to climate change is the main challenge for agriculture in the 21st century. Although new technologies are being applied to tackle this problem, we are approaching a plateau in crop improvement using conventional breeding. Recent advances in CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene engineering have paved the way to accelerate plant breeding to meet this increasing demand. However, many traits are governed by multiple small-effect genes operating in complex interactive networks. Here, we present the gene discovery pipeline BREEDIT, which combines multiplex genome editing of whole gene families with crossing schemes to improve complex traits such as yield and drought tolerance. We induced gene knockouts in 48 growth-related genes into maize (Zea mays) using CRISPR/Cas9 and generated a collection of over 1,000 gene-edited plants. The edited populations displayed (on average) 5%–10% increases in leaf length and up to 20% increases in leaf width compared with the controls. For each gene family, edits in subsets of genes could be associated with enhanced traits, allowing us to reduce the gene space to be considered for trait improvement. BREEDIT could be rapidly applied to generate a diverse collection of mutants to identify promising gene modifications for later use in breeding programs.

中文翻译：

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BREEDIT：一种多重基因组编辑策略，可改善玉米的复杂数量性状

确保不断增长的全球人口的粮食安全，同时适应气候变化是21世纪农业面临的主要挑战。尽管新技术正在被用来解决这个问题，但我们在使用传统育种进行作物改良方面正接近一个平台期。CRISPR/Cas9 介导的基因工程的最新进展为加速植物育种以满足这一日益增长的需求铺平了道路。然而，许多性状是由在复杂的交互网络中运行的多个小效应基因控制的。在这里，我们展示了基因发现管道 BREEDIT，它将整个基因家族的多重基因组编辑与杂交方案相结合，以提高产量和耐旱性等复杂性状。我们使用 CRISPR/Cas9 在玉米 (Zea mays) 中诱导了 48 个生长相关基因的基因敲除，并生成了 1,000 多种基因编辑植物的集合。与对照组相比，经过编辑的群体的叶子长度平均增加了 5%–10%，叶子宽度增加了 20%。对于每个基因家族，基因子集的编辑可能与增强的性状相关，从而使我们能够减少用于性状改善的基因空间。BREEDIT 可以快速应用来生成多种突变体，以识别有希望的基因修饰，以便以后在育种计划中使用。基因子集的编辑可能与增强的性状相关，从而使我们能够减少用于性状改善的基因空间。BREEDIT 可以快速应用来生成多种突变体，以识别有希望的基因修饰，以便以后在育种计划中使用。基因子集的编辑可能与增强的性状相关，使我们能够减少用于性状改善的基因空间。BREEDIT 可以快速应用来生成多种突变体，以识别有希望的基因修饰，以便以后在育种计划中使用。