CRISPR-Cas9 knockouts of NCED4 in lettuce. Lactuca sativa

This work describes a detailed, high resolution analysis of editing events in lettuce. This provides insights into mutational events resulting in stable transformants as a foundation for numerous further editing experiments in lettuce and other species. These editing events of the NCED4 gene are a phenocopy of a naturally occurring allele and result in a phenotype that is observable at the whole plant level with minimal pleotropic consequences. Therefore, editing of NCED4 could be used in a co-editing strategy to enrich for germline editing events.