2025/02/12 by Andreas Houben, Saravanakumar Somasundaram, Jörg Fuchs +6 · 2 voices
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Plant Genetic and Mutation Studies #Plant tissue culture and regeneration
paper · pdf · doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-5974840/v1
openalex publication_date 2025/02/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/14
Abstract Double haploid technology is a critical tool for accelerating plant breeding. The manipulation of centromere-specific histone H3 (CENH3) has previously been shown to induce haploid progeny in both the model plant Arabidopsis and certain crop species. However, a universally applicable strategy for CENH3-based haploid induction across diverse crop species is still lacking. Here, we demonstrate that extreme asymmetry in centromeric CENH3 levels between parental chromosomes is a causal factor for eliminating chromosomes with ‘weaker’ centromeres during early embryogenesis. Consequently, engineered E3-ligases were utilized to selectively degrade CENH3 in the egg cell to induce wild-type paternal haploids. Also, we attempted to optimize the CENH3 degradation using E3-ligases of plant-origin. Our findings provide valuable insights to enhance the haploid induction efficiency further. The gametophytic CENH3 degradation approach leverages engineering principles and represents a potentially universal strategy for engineering CENH3-based haploid inducers in crop plants.