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Poster

Session: Session 2 Presenting Authors at Posters (Evens)

P-214 - Transcriptome-guided combinatorial gene editing to unlock plant-microbiota homeostasis

Thursday, July 17, 2025
13:30 - 15:15  
Location: Confex Hall 3
Engineering plant-microbe traits

    Presenting Author(s)

  • SY

    Se-Hun Yun

    Post-doc
    Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research (MPIPZ)
    Cologne, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

    • Author(s)

  • CH

    Chiao-Jung Han

    Post-doc
    Institute of Plant Microbial Biology (IPMB), Academia Sinica
    Taipei, Taipei, Taiwan (Republic of China)

  • KM

    Ka-Wai Ma

    Assistant Research Fellow
    Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology (IPMB), Academia Sinica
    Taipei, Taipei, Taiwan (Republic of China)

  • PS

    Paul Schulze-Lefert

    Professor
    Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research
    Köln, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

Healthy plants host diverse microbial communities, collectively known as the plant microbiota. The taxonomic composition of the plant microbiota is deterministic, indicating the presence of an underlying regulatory mechanism(s). Recent advances show that the activation of innate immune responses not only protect plants against pathogens but also shape microbiota composition. However, the genetic basis for plant-microbiota homeostasis, needed for plant health, remains largely unknown. We previously identified gene clusters in Arabidopsis roots that respond differentially to synthetic bacterial communities with contrasting immunomodulatory traits. To investigate their potential functional contribution to plant-microbiota homeostasis, we developed a CRISPR-based combinatorial gene editing approach and synthesized corresponding guide RNA sequences randomly selected from a candidate pool of about one hundred target genes. We then generated Arabidopsis mutant libraries in which up to eight genes can be edited simultaneously. Screening of our higher-order mutant libraries revealed plants exhibiting phenotypes indicative of dysbiosis in the presence of a synthetic microbiota. Our results demonstrate that transcriptome-guided combinatorial gene editing is a useful tool for high-throughput functional studies of gene expression clusters, with gene modules presumably playing an important role in plant-microbiota homeostasis.