Editing plant genomes with CRISPR/Cas9

CRISPR/Cas9 is a rapidly developing genome editing technology that has been successfully applied in many organisms, including model and crop plants. Cas9, an RNA guided DNA endonuclease, can be targeted to specific genomic sequences by engineering a separately encoded guide RNA with which it forms a complex. As only a short RNA sequence must be synthesized to confer recognition of a new target, CRISPR/Cas9 is a relatively cheap and easy to implement technology that has proven to be extremely versatile. Remarkably, in some plant species, homozygous knockout mutants can be produced in a single generation. Together with other sequence-specific nucleases, CRISPR/Cas9 is a game-changing technology that is poised to revolutionise basic research and plant breeding.