Restricted edition of ALS is required during co-edition in order to maintain normal tomato development

Abstract

Co-editing strategies have emerged as an approach to facilitate the selection of CRISPR/Cas-mediated mutants in a transgene-free manner: the gene of interest is edited together with a reporter gene, whose mutation can be selected visually or pharmacologically. In this work, we asses the impact of editing the well-used reporter Acetolactate synthase (ALS) on plant development and metabolome. We show that the desired mutation in ALS1 (P186S) conferring selectable herbicide resistance trait does not show significant impact on the plant morphology and physiology but that the additional mutations resulting from the same sgRNA can result in reduced vegetative vigor and altered metabolomic profiles in tomato.