An Update on the Applications of CRISPR/Cas9 Technology in Tomato

Abstract

A genome is an organism’s complete set of DNA, including all of its genes. Each genome comprises all the information required to form and sustain the organism. Introducing any change in this genome might help us introduce the desired characters in the organism. Current genome editing technologies enable us to produce very efficient and specific nucleotide modifications. This becomes possible with the availability of some effective molecules and the DNA repair machinery of the cells. The lesions produced can cause localized nucleotide changes through inaccurate, nonhomologous end joining or desired nucleotide changes through homologous recombination with a donor DNA template. Till now there are three kinds of genome editing machinery complexes, the ZFNs (Zinc Finger Nucleases), TALENs (Transcription Activator-Like Effector Nucleases) and the most current one, CRISPR (Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats)/Cas9 (CRISPR-associated protein 9) RNA-guided Nucleases. In the following chapter, we discuss all the traits of tomato, edited using CRISPR-cas9 genome editing technology.