Agrochemical-responsive gene expression control systems for modulating plant development and metabolism

Root application of methoxyfenozide (MF) enables systemic activation of Cas9- and Cre recombinase–based ecdysone receptor (EcR) gene control in transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana, supporting whole-plant regulation.

• Why it matters: Existing chemically inducible plant systems are limited by impractical inducers and insufficient flexibility to coordinate native loci and transgenes over time.
• What they did: The authors engineered Cas9 and Cre recombinase fused to EcR, tuned nuclear trafficking dynamics, tested transient function, and characterized fluorescent reporter control in transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana.
• The result: They show MF can induce whole-plant gene expression and validate an inducible Cas-based SynTF system for multigene pathway control spanning metabolic and developmental phenotypes.

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