Project description:BackgroundZebrafish is a model organism widely used for the understanding of gene function, including the fundamental basis of human disease, enabled by the presence in its genome of a high number of orthologs to human genes. CRISPR/Cas9 and next-generation gene-editing techniques using cytidine deaminase fused with Cas9 nickase provide fast and efficient tools able to induce sequence-specific single base mutations in various organisms and have also been used to generate genetically modified zebrafish for modeling pathogenic mutations. However, the editing efficiency in zebrafish of currently available base editors is lower than other model organisms, frequently inducing indel formation, which limits the applicability of these tools and calls for the search of more accurate and efficient editors.ResultsHere, we generated a new base editor (zAncBE4max) with a length of 5560 bp following a strategy based on the optimization of codon preference in zebrafish. Our new editor effectively created C-to-T base substitution while maintaining a high product purity at multiple target sites. Moreover, zAncBE4max successfully generated the Twist2 p.E78K mutation in zebrafish, recapitulating pathological features of human ablepharon macrostomia syndrome (AMS).ConclusionsOverall, the zAncBE4max system provides a promising tool to perform efficient base editing in zebrafish and enhances its capacity to precisely model human diseases.
Project description:Base Editors are emerging as an innovative technology to introduce point mutations in complex genomes. So far, the requirement of an NGG Protospacer Adjacent Motif (PAM) at a suitable position often limits the base editing possibility to model human pathological mutations in animals. Here we show that, using the CBE4max-SpRY variant recognizing nearly all PAM sequences, we could introduce point mutations for the first time in an animal model with high efficiency, thus drastically increasing the base editing possibilities. With this near PAM-less base editor we could simultaneously mutate several genes and we developed a co-selection method to identify the most edited embryos based on a simple visual screening. Finally, we apply our method to create a zebrafish model for melanoma predisposition based on the simultaneous base editing of multiple genes. Altogether, our results considerably expand the Base Editor application to introduce human disease-causing mutations in zebrafish.
Project description:Gene-modified miniature pigs serve as alternative tissue and organ donors for xenotransplantation to alleviate the shortage of human allogenic organs. However, the high copy number of porcine endogenous retrovirus (PERV) genomes integrates with the porcine genome, which has a potential risk of cross-species transmission and hinders the clinical practice of xenotransplantation. Recently, CRISPR/Cas9 has been used to inactivate PERVs. However, Cas9 also triggers severe DNA damage at multiple integrated PERV sites in the porcine genome, which induces senescence and apoptosis of porcine cells. In this study, the cytosine base editor (CBE), an efficient and safe editor that does not cause DNA double strand breaks (DSBs), was used for PERV editing to reduce cytotoxic effects. Seven sgRNAs were set to target gag and pol loci of PERVs to induce premature stop codons. We found that approximately 10% of cell clones were completely inactivated for PERVs in pig ST cells, and the plasmid that was used for editing the PERVs did not integrate into host genome and influence the karyotype of the modified cells. Our studies offer a powerful and safe strategy for further generating PERV-knockout pigs using base editors.
Project description:Target-specific genome editing using engineered nucleases has become widespread in various fields. Long gene knock-in and single-base substitutions can be performed by homologous recombination (HR), but the efficiency is usually very low. To improve the efficiency of knock-in with single-stranded oligo DNA nucleotides (ssODNs), we have investigated optimal design of ssODNs in terms of the blocking mutation, orientation, size, and length of homology arms to explore the optimal parameters of ssODN design using reporter systems for the detection of single-base substitutions. We have also investigated the difference in knock-in efficiency among the delivery forms and methods of Cas9 and sgRNA. The knock-in efficiencies for optimized ssODNs were much higher than those for ssODNs with no blocking mutation. We have also demonstrated that Cas9 protein/sgRNA ribonucleoprotein complexes (Cas9-RNPs) can dramatically reduce the re-cutting of the edited sites.
Project description:CRISPR base editing enables the creation of targeted single-base conversions without generating double-stranded breaks. However, the efficiency of current base editors is very low in many cell types. We reengineered the sequences of BE3, BE4Gam, and xBE3 by codon optimization and incorporation of additional nuclear-localization sequences. Our collection of optimized constitutive and inducible base-editing vector systems dramatically improves the efficiency by which single-nucleotide variants can be created. The reengineered base editors enable target modification in a wide range of mouse and human cell lines, and intestinal organoids. We also show that the optimized base editors mediate efficient in vivo somatic editing in the liver in adult mice.
Project description:Adenine base editors (ABEs) are novel genome-editing tools, and their activity has been greatly enhanced by eight additional mutations, thus named ABE8e. However, elevated catalytic activity was concomitant with frequent generation of bystander mutations. This bystander effect precludes its safe applications required in human gene therapy. To develop next-generation ABEs that are both catalytically efficient and positionally precise, we performed combinatorial engineering of NG-ABE8e. We identify a novel variant (NG-ABE9e), which harbors nine mutations. NG-ABE9e exhibits robust and precise base-editing activity in human cells, with more than 7-fold bystander editing reduction at some sites, compared with NG-ABE8e. To demonstrate its practical utility, we used NG-ABE9e to correct the frequent T17M mutation in Rhodopsin for autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa. It reduces bystander editing by ∼4-fold while maintaining comparable efficiency. NG-ABE9e possesses substantially higher activity than NG-ABEmax and significantly lower bystander editing than NG-ABE8e in rice. Therefore, this study provides a versatile and improved adenine base editor for genome editing.
Project description:CRISPR nucleases generate a broad spectrum of mutations that includes undesired editing outcomes. Here, we develop optimized C-to-T base editing systems for the generation of precise loss- or gain-of-function alleles in Drosophila and identify temperature as a crucial parameter for efficiency. We find that a variant of the widely used APOBEC1 deaminase has attenuated activity at 18° to 29°C and shows considerable dose-dependent toxicity. In contrast, the temperature-tolerant evoCDA1 domain mediates editing of typically more than 90% of alleles and is substantially better tolerated. Furthermore, formation of undesired mutations is exceptionally rare in Drosophila compared to other species. The predictable editing outcome, high efficiency, and product purity enables near homogeneous induction of STOP codons or alleles encoding protein variants in vivo. Last, we demonstrate how optimized expression enables conditional base editing in marked cell populations. This work substantially facilitates creation of precise alleles in Drosophila and provides key design parameters for developing efficient base editing systems in other ectothermic species.