Virus-induced genome editing in the parasitic plant Phtheirospermum japonicum

Phtheirospermum japonicum is a genetic model for parasitic Orobanchaceae, a plant family that includes noxious parasitic weeds from the genera Striga, Orobanche, and Phelipanche (Ishida et al., 2011). Striga species alone cause billions of dollars in annual losses by reducing yields of major crops (Pennisi, 2010). The lack of stable transgenesis protocols often hinders heritable CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing for gene function analysis in crops and species beyond standard model plants, including parasitic Orobanchaceae (Steinberger and Voytas, 2025). Here, we adapted a virus-mediated delivery system for ultracompact TnpB nucleases, enabling genome editing independently of tissue regeneration or floral dip transformation in the parasitic plant P. japonicum (Nagalakshmi et al., 2025; Weiss et al., 2025).