DEVELOPING CRISPR/CAS GENOME EDITING TOOLKITS FOR FUNGAL PLANT PATHOGENS

the crispr (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats)/cas (crispr-associated protein) system has emerged as a powerful tool for genome editing and genetic engineering due to its simplicity, versatility and broad applicability. in contrast to the rapid progress and broad applications of crispr/cas technologies in biomedical and plant fields, only limited crispr/cas genome editing toolkits have been tested and available for plant pathogenic fungi. the overarching goal of this project is to develop and improve bioinformatic databases and crispr/cas9 toolkits for guide rna (grna) design and genome editing in plant pathogenic fungi. this project will lead to a searchable database and website for fungal grna design and improved crispr/cas9 genome editing toolkits, which are expected to benefit the fungal research community and accelerate functional genomics analysis and mechanistic elucidation of fungal pathogenesis.