Application value of protein phase separation mechanism of flowering regulation in de novo domestication.

Global climate change and population growth pose a serious threat to world food security. The current crops varieties will be insufficient to meet food needs in the future, and there is an urgent need for high yielding and quality crops varieties with strong environmental adaptability. The rapid de novo domestication of wild species to create new germplasm that can be applied to crop breeding is a new strategy for ensuring food security. The flowering time is an important factor in determining the crop planting area and yield, and is a trait that is often selected in crop domestication. At present, the modification of flowering traits by de novo domestication is usually achieved by direct editing of the major genes that control flowering in crop, which are very limited in number and relatively homogeneous in function. Floral transition is regulated by the complex network of environmental and endogenous signals. Here, we propose a new strategy that using genome editing to precisely modify protein function by changing protein phase separation capacity of important proteins that regulate expression of flowering genes, which may provide new options for the design of flowering traits in de novo domestication.