Transcriptional regulation by CRISPR/dCas9 in common wheat

The application of CRISPR/Cas9 system for gene editing, as a technical coup for biotechnology, is worldwide and encompasses multiple of species. The inactivation of catalytical site in Cas9 (dCas9) has been reprogrammed as an effective approach to regulate the transcriptional level of target genes, especially for the functionally essential genes and redundant genes. Here, we exploited the CRISPR/dCas9 system to manipulate the transcriptional level of target genes in common wheat. To improve target gene's expression, we generated transcriptional activator by fusing 6×TAL-VP128 activation domain to the C-terminus of dCas9 in frame. For target gene's repressing expression transcriptionally, 3×SRDX repression domain was conjugated to the C-terminus of dCas9 in frame. Our results showed that dCas9 fused activation or repression domain could increase or decrease the transcriptional level of target gene effectively in stable transgenic lines of wheat. The study on the tRNA-processing system in CRISPR/dCas9 based transcriptional regulation system demonstrated that this robust multiplex targeted tool can be incorporated to the CRISPR/dCas9 system to facilitate the target regulation of several genes' transcriptional level. Our data broaden the application of CRISPR/dCas9 based transcriptional regulation and provide great opportunities to investigate the function of essential genes in common wheat.