From gene editing to genome reconstitution: evolving techniques in yeast.

Homologous recombination is one of the main repair pathways in response to DNA double strand break (DSB) in eukaryotes. Based on this, a series of techniques to introduce DSB have been developed in order to edit the DNA sequence of genome. In eukaryotes, the gene editing technique was first established in S. cerevisiae by transformation of a foreign DNA fragment containing the sequence homologous to the targeted site more than thirty years ago. The core of all currently available editing methods lies in the introduction of DSB. Here, we try to convey a historic view of various editing techniques from its original version to the up-to-dated genome synthesis and reconstitution. We believe that this review will help to illustrate the trend of the development of genome editing techniques, which will provide a valuable reference for developing similar techniques in mammals.