Geminiviruses for biotechnology: the art of parasite taming

Summary Viruses are intracellular pathogens that have evolved efficient strategies for replication and expression of their proteins in the host cells. Geminiviruses – plant viruses with small circular single‐stranded DNA genomes – effectively manipulate plant cell processes for viral functions, entailing great potential for biotechnological applications. This potentiality has been realized in the form of protein expression and gene‐silencing vectors, and, more recently, vectors for genome editing – a technology that these viruses seem particularly well‐suited to facilitate. This insight offers an overview of the biological properties of geminiviruses, with emphasis on those leveraging development of geminivirus‐based replicons. It illustrates the basis for engineering geminivirus‐based replicons and their applications. Furthermore, it discusses the reported use and future perspectives of geminivirus‐based replicons for genome editing.ContentsSummary 58 I. Introduction 58 II. Outsourcing DNA synthesis: geminiviral replication 59 III. Geminivirus‐based replicons: all from one – and one for all 59 IV. Genome editing in plants: how geminiviruses can help 60 V. Conclusions and outlook 62Acknowledgements 63References 63