Diverse nucleotide substitutions in rice base editing mediated by novel TadA variants

CRISPR-mediated base editors have been widely used to correct defective alleles and create novel alleles by artificial evolution in rapid genetic improvement of crops. The editing capabilities of base editors strictly rely on the performance of various nucleotide modification enzymes. Compared to the well-developed adenine base editors (ABEs), cytosine base editors (CBEs) and dual base editors suffer from unstable editing efficiency and pattern at different genomic loci in rice, significantly limiting their application. Here, the activities of multiple evolved TadA8e variants in base editing have been comprehensively examined in rice. We found that both TadA-CDd and TadA-E27R/N46L achieve more robust C-to-T editing than previously reported hyperactive hAID*Δ, whereas TadA-CDd outperformed TadA-E27R/N46L. Also, the C-to-G base editor (CGBE) engineered with TadA-CDd and OsUNG performs highly efficient C-to-G editing in rice compared to TadA-N46P. In addition, the dual base editor, which was constructed with a single protein TadDE, enables simultaneously edit C-to-T and A-to-G at high efficiency in rice. Collectively, our study demonstrates that TadA8e derivatives improve both CBE and dual base editor in rice, provide a powerful way in inducing diverse nucleotide substitutions for plant genome editing.