Investigation of C3H Zinc Finger Gene Function Using CRISPR

Zinc finger motifs are abundant and are known to have considerable variation in binding properties. In this study, we investigate the function of two C3H zinc finger proteins from Arabidopsis thaliana encoded by genes AT3G52440, AT5G06420 and AT1G01350. This family of proteins has been shown to be involved in protein-protein, protein-RNA, and protein-DNA interactions. Although many animal C3H zinc finger proteins have been extensively described, only a few family members have been characterized in plants. To better understand the function of these two zinc finger proteins, we employed CRISPR gene editing techniques to knock-out gene function. We used Agrobacterium mediated plant transformation to stably transfer CRISPR guide RNA and CAS9 into plants. The current progress of the phenotypic characterization of the generated CRISPR lines will be presented.