Wuschel2 enables highly efficient CRISPR/Cas-targeted genome editing during rapid de novo shoot regeneration in sorghum

Summary For many important crops, including sorghum, the use of CRISPR/Cas technology is limited not only by the delivery of the gene-modification components into a plant cell, but more critically, by the ability to regenerate a fertile plant from the engineered cell through conventional tissue culture methods. Here, we report that Wuschel2 (Wus2)-enabled sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L.) transformation increases not only the efficiency of transgenic plant recovery, but also increases the observed efficiency of CRISPR/Cas-targeted genome editing within the population of T0 plants. Using Agrobacterium-mediated transformation, we have demonstrated Wus2-induced direct somatic embryo formation and regeneration, bypassing genotype-dependent callus formation and significantly shortening the tissue culture cycle time. This method also increased regeneration capacity, resulting in higher transformation efficiency across different sorghum genotypes. Subsequently, advanced excision systems and “altruistic” transformation technology have been developed to generate high-quality morphogenic gene-free and/or selectable marker-free sorghum events. Finally, we demonstrated up to an additional 6.8-fold increase in CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene dropout frequency using Wus2-enabled, Agrobacterium-mediated transformation (compared to the control treatment with no Wus2), across various targeted loci in different sorghum genotypes. Wus2-enabled genome editing may be applicable to other crops and increasingly popular in planta transformation strategies.