A synthetic genetic switch for tracking T-DNA delivery supports integration-free genome editing in plants

T-SWITCH reveals that in Arabidopsis thaliana floral dip AMT, ~13–26% of transformation events deliver T-DNA without integration, separating delivery from genome insertion.

• Why it matters: AMT delivery and integration are hard to measure independently, limiting control over plant genetic engineering precision and efficiency.
• What they did: The authors built T-SWITCH, a genome-integrated synthetic switch that reports T-DNA delivery via a heritable seed phenotype, then quantified delivery versus integration and tested how plant, vector, and bacterial variables affect integration rate.
• The result: Using T-SWITCH, they recover plants with biallelic CRISPR-induced mutations without detectable integration of CRISPR-Cas components, enabling rapid isolation of integration-free edited plants with standard Agrobacterium protocols.

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