Updated December 2, 2021:
This project aims to develop tools for more efficient and precise gene editing in soybean, and to make these tools accessible to the soybean research community. We are exploring editing in soybean protoplasts and somatic tissues, using novel approaches to efficiently regenerate whole plants from these cell and tissue types. While most of our efforts are focused on generating mutations that eliminate gene function(s), we are also exploring base editors and epigenome editing to enable single DNA base and epigenetic changes for modified gene functions. This project contributed to one patent: Inventors Feng Zhang, Robert M Stupar, Daniel F Voytas, Gunvant Patil (Publication date 2021/2/18) Methods for genetic transformation and genome modification in legumes (Application number 16913478) (https://patents.google.com/patent/US20210047652A1/en).