Attaining the Promise of Geminivirus-Based Vectors in Plant Genome Editing

Over the last 40 years several studies have provided evidence demonstrating that viral vectors can result in improved gene replacement and insertions experiments. Viruses being invisible infectious agents can severely impact on organism’s life cycle. They are obligate intracellular pathogens that have evolved efficient strategies to hijack and manipulate the host’s immune system, and this nature of viruses can be exploited for its best utilization in molecular biology. Geminiviruses, for instance, are one of the largest families of plant viruses with small circular single-stranded DNA genomes, which efficiently manipulate the host’s genetic machinery for their own replication and protein expression, entailing great potential for genetic engineering applications. In this review, we describe how geminiviruses can open up a world of opportunities for efficient genome editing, thus lessening the major technical constraints including HDR-mediated genome editing and time-inefficient tissue culture procedure. Many promoters and terminators employed in the expression cassette development are from viruses and their modifications can be utilized to enhance protein expression studies. All these insights illustrate a broader picture of plant viruses, with emphasis on engineering plant viruses to ease genome editing practices for crop improvements.