CRISPR/Cas9: Contemporary designer nucleases for efficient genome editing in phytopathogenic fungi

Plant diseases caused by fungal pathogens are one of the main factors contributing to severe economic losses due to reductions in yield and the quality of crops. Studying the fungal genes related to pathogenicity to reveal their infection mechanism through genome editing can play an important role in the management of these diseases. The clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR associated nuclease 9 (Cas9) system is a versatile tool for genome engineering which has recently been adopted for sequence specific regulation of gene expression in many plant pathogenic fungal genomes. It is the current scientific consensus point of view that this simple RNA guided genome editing tool is cheaper, easier to use, and is higher in gene modification efficiency than any other available gene editing tool. In this mini review, we discuss the molecular mechanisms underlying the CRISPR/Cas9 technique and its recent improvements and applications beyond gene editing. We discuss and summarize a few recent studies targeting phytopathogenic fungal genomes, potential applications, the remaining challenges, and future perspectives. Our analysis provides insights into how this method can be more widely applied to combat fungal phytopathogens.