Neopyropia is an important economic macroalga and is one of the main macroalgae cultivation species in China, Japan, South Korea and other countries. As a critical juncture in the evolution of photosynthetic organisms, red algae to which Neopyropia belongs is regarded as a potential model species for studying the basic biology of macroalgae.

However, due to a complex genome of extremely high GC content and uncharacterized regulation mechanisms of gene expression, the gene editing in Neopyropia, which is crucial for research of both genetic breeding and reverse genetics, is hard to realize.

Recently, the research team led by Prof. Wang Guangce from the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOCAS) made significant progress in the reverse genetics research in economic macroalgae, and achieved gene editing in Neopyropia yezoensis, paving the way for molecular design breeding of economic macroalgae.

The study was published in New Phytologist on Sept. 12.

Researchers developed a gene editing strategy based on the life history of Neopyropia and optimized the CRISPR/Cas system. They introduced a self-cleaving peptide gene from porcine virus to link selection marker gene and CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9) to enable high expression of Cas9 in hygromycin-tolerant strains.

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