Plant Genome Editing for Enhanced Biotic Stress Tolerance Using the CRISPR/Cas Technology

Plants are continuously attacked by a wide range of disease-causing microorganisms, which damage crops and threaten agricultural sustainability. To deal with this situation, crop varieties that are resistant to biotic stresses have been created by altering their genomes. Plant genome editing with designed nucleases makes it easier to characterize and quantify cells as well as to understand their structural and functional dynamics. The scientific community is well aware of the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)/Cas (CRISPR-associated system) as a highly effective tool for genome editing. It is an RNA-guided repetitive DNA spacer sequence that is primarily found in archaea and bacterial cells in the form of adaptive immunity. The physicochemical and functional characterization of these gene-centric CRISPR/Cas genetic scissors, which has revolutionized microarray’s limitations, has benefited the production of stress-tolerant plant varieties. The class 2 CRISPR-Cas system’s Cas9 and Cas12 proteins cut double-stranded DNA, whereas Cas13 targets mRNA and promises a repair mechanism to accurately manipulate the targeted gene. The interdependent basic links of the redesigned heteroduplex structure along with its stochastic omic studies provide a complete understanding and redefining of the gene ontology (GO) for genetic engineering. This chapter will discuss RNA-guided endonuclease-induced technologies and data-driven from the interactomics of plant cells to manage the complex regulatory and metabolic processes in plants to achieve resistance against biotic stress.