Engineering plant virus resistance: Gene silencing to genome editing

These technologies, the CRISPR/Cas9 system has gained more popularity by virtue of its simplicity, efficiency and reproducibility. CRISPR/Cas9 have been exploited to engineer plant virus resistance, either by directly targeting and cleaving the viral genome, or by modifying the host plant genome to introduce viral immunity. Here, we describe the biology of the CRISPR/Cas9 system and plant viruses, and how this genome engineering tool has been used to target the devastating plant viruses.