Authors
Ujala Nasir, Aneela Yasmeen, Muhammad Awais, Ayesha Latif, Allah Bakhsh, Nadeem Ahmad, Naila Shahid, Saira Azam, Abdul Qayyum Rao, Ahmad Ali Shahid
Published in
Plant science : an international journal of experimental plant biology. Pages 113370. Aug 09, 2026. Epub Aug 09, 2026.
Abstract
The inadequate amounts of provitamin A carotenoids in crops contribute to the widespread vitamin A deficiency, leading to malnutrition and blindness in humans. Suppression of the β-carotene hydroxylase (BCH) increases β-carotene levels. In the current study, we utilized the multiplexed CRISPR/Cas9 approach by designing three targets against the BCH gene in a local potato cultivar. Transformation efficiency was recorded as 15%, the successful integration of the CRISPR/Cas9-BCH multiplex construct in potatoes was confirmed through PCR. When analysed using TIDE software, Sanger sequencing revealed the highest indel efficacy of 92.1% in plant 7 and 26.6% in plant 1. qRT-PCR (quantitative real-time PCR) analysis indicated a significant 89-fold reduction in BCH transcript levels in genome-edited potato lines compared to control plants. Spectrophotometry demonstrated a notable increase in beta-carotene levels in genome-edited potato plants, ranging from 0.831µg/mL FW to 4.236µg/mL FW, compared to the control plant with the lowest beta-carotene concentration (0.344µg/mL FW). HPLC analysis further confirmed increased beta-carotene levels in genome-edited potato plants, ranging from 0.11mg/mL FW to 0.36mg/mL FW, compared to the unmodified control plant with a minimum beta-carotene value of 0.09mg/mL. Our results revealed that the multiplexed CRISPR-Cas9 approach targeting the BCH gene results in enhanced beta-carotene contents in potato tubers.
PMID:
42571853
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 10 Aug 2026.
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