The African Centre for Gene Technologies (ACGT) and the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) hosted a plant genome editing workshop between the 3rd and the 5th of September 2019 at the ARC’s Biotechnology Platform situated on the Onderstepoort Campus.
Scientists from the Karlsrühe Institute of Technology, Germany (KIT) presented a “starter kit” for model plant CRISPR-related work in South Africa. The relationship with KIT began in 2017 with Professor Holger Puchta visiting South Africa on an ACGT invitation, to present a keynote address at one of the annual ACGT Regional Plant Biotechnology Forum series meetings. When the ACGT approached Prof Puchta to facilitate a three-day beginner’s workshop on plant genome editing with the CRISPR/Cas technology utilized in his laboratory, he recommended his trusted colleagues, Patrick Schindele and Angelina Schindele, to facilitate the workshop, who graciously accepted the invitation.
The three-day workshop included both theory and practical sessions during which the participants were introduced to gene targeting in plants by using the CRISPR/Cas9-system.
Topics covered in the sessions included:
- Classification of the CRISPR/Cas-systems currently in use
- Designing guide RNAs manually and with online tools
- CRISPR construction and guide RNA cloning into the KIT group’s vectors using various cloning strategies, such as Gateway cloning
- Current applications of CRISPR/Cas technologies looking beyond gene editing
- Approaches to Agrobacterium transformation of model plants.
Prof Puchta’s lab generously provided constructs for the participants to work on during the practical sessions. The relationship established with KIT will be an ongoing one. Prof Puchta’s lab has offered to assist participants who attended the workshop with their published constructs and other plant genome editing related queries. Queries must be directed to the ACGT. Inqaba Biotec partnered with ACGT and ARC as the major sponsor and generously provided the majority of reagents used in the workshop.
The plant genome editing community in South Africa is a small but growing one. The workshop provided an opportunity for scientists in the field to be aware what other institutions in the region are doing in the plant genome editing space. Indeed, collaborative discussions have already been established between the ARC and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) on a possible project as a direct result of this workshop. The participants were all enthusiastic about having a more cohesive community and the ACGT will facilitate the process by creating a CRISPR list server (contact ACGT’s Liaison Scientist, Mr Thabo Khoza, to gain access) and subsequently a Genome Editing Interest Group. The participant feedback indicated that both the extensive theoretical overview of the different technologies, combined with the KIT CRISPR experts’ practical experience, provided key insights into the technology during the practical sessions, with details often not provided in laboratory protocols or papers.
Contact Thabo Khoza:
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Story by: ACGT, October 2019