PIF2024 - Biotechnological applications of plant virus-derived vectors (PID2023-146418OB-I00)

Plant viruses are infectious agents that cause disease and limit agricultural production worldwide. At the same time, they exhibit remarkable properties in terms of fast and efficient genome replication, systemic movement through the plant and ability to take control of host gene expression machinery. The first goal of this Ph.D. project is to develop virus-derived vectors to facilitate CRISPR-Cas genome editing in plants. All fields in bioscience are currently experiencing an exciting revolution based on CRISPR-Cas technologies. Agriculture is one of the fields in which CRISPR-Cas has a more straightforward applicability, with the promise of novel varieties more nutritive and productive, resistant to pests and pathogens, and better adapted to changing environmental conditions. However, applicability of CRISPR-Cas in plants still requires solving some limitations, such as the quick and efficient expression of CRISPR-Cas reaction components, in the most basic assembly a Cas nuclease that cleaves the genome and a guide RNA that navigates the nuclease through the genome. In this project, we aim to solve this problem by developing plant virus-derived vectors able to efficiently express the CRISPR-Cas reaction components in plant tissues, particularly in the germline cells to obtain a gene-edited progeny. The second goal of this project is to apply the new vectors to target susceptibility genes in some horticulture crops to obtain varieties resistant to pests and pathogens.