Paper

Improving cassava bacterial blight resistance by editing the epigenome

Yoder, Marisa, Lin, Zuh-Jyh Daniel, Veley, Kira M, Motomura-Wages, Sharon, Zhong, Zhenhui, Elliott, Kiona, Gilbert, Kerrigan B, Jacobsen, Steven E, Gallego-Bartolome, Javier, Norton, Joanna, Ghoshal, Basudev, Jensen, Greg, Carrington, James C, Bart, Rebecca, Feng, Suhua, Berry, Jeffrey C

2022

Overview

Pathogens rely on expression of host susceptibility (S) genes to promote infection and disease. As DNA methylation is an epigenetic modification that affects gene expression, blocking access to S genes through targeted methylation could increase disease resistance. Xanthomonas phaseoli pv. manihotis, the causal agent of cassava bacterial blight (CBB), uses transcription activator-like20 (TAL20) to induce expression of the S gene MeSWEET10a. In this work, we direct methylation to the TAL20 effector binding element within the MeSWEET10a promoter using a synthetic zinc-finger DNA binding domain fused to a component of the RNA-directed DNA methylation pathway. We demonstrate that this methylation prevents TAL20 binding, blocks transcriptional activation of MeSWEET10a in vivo and that these plants display decreased CBB symptoms while maintaining normal growth and development. This work therefore presents an epigenome editing approach useful for crop improvement.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.Footnotes* This article has been updated to include more off-target analysis in addition to other, more minor, changes.

• Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press,Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
• Subject: Blight / Crop improvement / Deoxyribonucleic acid / Disease resistance / DNA / DNA methylation / Epigenetics / Gene expression / Plant Biology / Plant diseases / S gene / Transcription activation / Zinc finger proteins