Efficient protein tagging and cis-regulatory element engineering via precise and directional oligonucleotide-based targeted insertion in plants.

Efficient and precise targeted insertion holds great promise but remains challenging in plant genome editing. An efficient non-homologous end-joining-mediated targeted insertion method was recently developed by combining CRISPR/SpCas9 gene editing with phosphorothioate modified double-stranded oligodeoxynucleotides (dsODNs). Yet this approach often leads to imprecise insertions with no control over the insertion direction. Here, we compared the influence of chemical protection of dsODNs on efficiency of targeted insertion. We observed that CRISPR/SpCas9 frequently induced staggered cleavages with 1-nucleotide 5´overhangs; we also evaluated the effect of donor end structures on the direction and precision of targeted insertions. We demonstrate that chemically protected dsODNs with 1-nucleotide 5´ overhangs significantly improved the precision and direction control of target insertions in all tested CRISPR targeted sites. We applied this method to endogenous gene tagging in green foxtail (Setaria viridis), and engineering of cis-regulatory elements for disease resistance in rice (Oryza sativa). We directionally inserted two distinct transcription activator-like effector binding elements into the promoter region of a recessive rice bacterial blight resistance gene with up to 24.4% efficiency. The resulting rice lines harboring heritable insertions exhibited strong resistance to infection by the pathogen Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae in an inducible and strain-specific manner.