[From random mutagenesis to precise genome editing: the development and evolution of genome editing techniques in...

Drosophila melanogaster, an important model organism for studying life science, has contributed more to the research of genetics, developmental biology and biomedicine with the development of genome editing techniques. Drosophila genome-editing techniques have evolved from random mutagenesis to precise genome editing and from simple mutant construction to diverse genome editing methods since the 20th century. Chemical mutagenesis, using Ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS), is an important technique to study gene function in forward genetics, however, the precise knockout of Drosophila genes could not be achieved. The gene targeting technology, based on homologous recombination, has accomplished the precise editing of Drosophila genome for the first time, but with low efficiency. The CRISPR/Cas9 (Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/CRISPR-associated protein)-mediated precise genome editing is simple, fast and highly efficient compared with the gene targeting technology in Drosophila. In this review, we focus on Drosophila gene knockout, and summarize the evolution of genome editing techniques in Drosophila, emphasizing the development and applications of gene targeting, zinc-finger nuclease (ZFN), transcription activator-like effector nuclease (TALEN) and CRISPR/Cas9 techniques.