De novo domestication of wild tomato using genome editing

• Published in: Nature biotechnology 2018-12, Vol.36 (12), p.1211-1216
• Main Authors: Zsögön, Agustin, Čermák, Tomáš, Naves, Emmanuel Rezende, Notini, Marcela Morato, Edel, Kai H, Weinl, Stefan, Freschi, Luciano, Voytas, Daniel F, Kudla, Jörg, Peres, Lázaro Eustáquio Pereira
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 13/106; 38/22; 38/23; 38/70; 38/77; 631/449/2492; 631/61/447/2311; Agriculture; Agronomy; Analysis; Ankylosing spondylitis; Biodiversity; Bioinformatics; Biomedical Engineering/Biotechnology; Biomedicine; Biotechnology; CRISPR; Disease resistance; Domestication; Editing; Fruits; Gene editing; Genetic aspects; Genetic diversity; Genome editing; Genomes; Genomics; Life Sciences; Lycopene; Morphology; Nutritive value; Plant breeding; Productivity; Solanum pimpinellifolium; Tomato breeding; Tomatoes
• ISSN: 1087-0156; 1546-1696
• DOI: 10.1038/nbt.4272

A wild tomato species is domesticated by targeted CRISPR–Cas9 editing of just six genes. Breeding of crops over millennia for yield and productivity 1 has led to reduced genetic diversity. As a result, beneficial traits of wild species, such as disease resistance and stress tolerance, have been lost 2 . We devised a CRISPR–Cas9 genome engineering strategy to combine agronomically desirable traits with useful traits present in wild lines. We report that editing of six loci that are important for yield and productivity in present-day tomato crop lines enabled de novo domestication of wild Solanum pimpinellifolium. Engineered S. pimpinellifolium morphology was altered, together with the size, number and nutritional value of the fruits. Compared with the wild parent, our engineered lines have a threefold increase in fruit size and a tenfold increase in fruit number. Notably, fruit lycopene accumulation is improved by 500% compared with the widely cultivated S. lycopersicum . Our results pave the way for molecular breeding programs to exploit the genetic diversity present in wild plants.