Visualization of Chromatin Loci with Transiently Expressed CRISPR/Cas9 in Plants

Abstract

Labeling of specific DNA sequences in living organisms is important for understanding the mechanism of gene regulation during development, differentiation, and environmental adaptation. Here we describe a CRISPR/Cas9-based chromatin visualization system in plants. We adapted the mammalian nuclease-dead Cas9-fluorescent protein (dCas9-FP) system to a plant expression vector. Transient expression of dCas9-FP and single guide RNA (sgRNA) for telomeric sequences efficiently labeled telomere repeats in tobacco.