Engineering chromatin and transcriptome regulation in plants: Strategies, challenges, and outlook

In plants, altering the accessibility to DNA through chromatin modification is a key component of transcriptome regulation, crucial for normal development and environmental response. In recent years, our understanding of how and why plants engineer their chromatin has greatly improved, leading to strategies that now enable us to engineer chromatin through both targeted and non-targeted approaches. Although new and improved systems for chromatin engineering are continually emerging, it is evident that developing a diverse toolbox of strategies to tackle various unique challenges is necessary. This review outlines different methods for non-targeted and targeted chromatin engineering, enabling the manipulation of the transcriptome through chromatin engineering. It also discusses particular challenges in the field of chromatin engineering in plants and offers a brief outlook on potential future directions.