Project description:Base editors are RNA-guided deaminases that enable site-specific nucleotide transitions. The targeting scope of these Cas-deaminase fusion proteins critically depends on the availability of a protospacer adjacent motif (PAM) at the selected genomic locus, and is limited to a window within the CRISPR-Cas R-loop where single stranded (ss)DNA is accessible to the deaminase. Here, we reason that the Cas9-HNH nuclease domain sterically constrains ssDNA accessibility, and demonstrate that omission of this domain expands the editing window. By exchanging the HNH nuclease domain with an adenosine deaminase, we furthermore engineer adenine base editor variants (HNHx-ABE) with PAM-proximally shifted editing windows. HNHx-ABEs are substantially reduced in size, and expand the targeting scope of base editors. Our finding that the HNH domain is replaceable could moreover benefit future protein engineering efforts, where Cas9 operates together with other enzyme domains.
Project description:Base editors are RNA-guided deaminases that enable site-specific nucleotide transitions. The targeting scope of these Cas-deaminase fusion proteins critically depends on the availability of a protospacer adjacent motif (PAM) at the selected genomic locus, and is limited to a window within the CRISPR-Cas R-loop where single stranded (ss)DNA is accessible to the deaminase. Here, we reason that the Cas9-HNH nuclease domain sterically constrains ssDNA accessibility, and demonstrate that omission of this domain expands the editing window. By exchanging the HNH nuclease domain with an adenosine deaminase, we furthermore engineer adenine base editor variants (HNHx-ABE) with PAM-proximally shifted editing windows. HNHx-ABEs are substantially reduced in size, and expand the targeting scope of base editors. Our finding that the HNH domain is replaceable could moreover benefit future protein engineering efforts, where Cas9 operates together with other enzyme domains.
Project description:Base editors are RNA-guided deaminases that enable site-specific nucleotide transitions. The targeting scope of these Cas-deaminase fusion proteins critically depends on the availability of a protospacer adjacent motif (PAM) at the selected genomic locus, and is limited to a window within the CRISPR-Cas R-loop where single stranded (ss)DNA is accessible to the deaminase. Here, we reason that the Cas9-HNH nuclease domain sterically constrains ssDNA accessibility, and demonstrate that omission of this domain expands the editing window. By exchanging the HNH nuclease domain with an adenosine deaminase, we furthermore engineer adenine base editor variants (HNHx-ABE) with PAM-proximally shifted editing windows. HNHx-ABEs are substantially reduced in size, and expand the targeting scope of base editors. Our finding that the HNH domain is replaceable could moreover benefit future protein engineering efforts, where Cas9 operates together with other enzyme domains.
Project description:The targeting range of CRISPR-Cas9 base editors (BEs) is limited by their G/C-rich PAM sequences. To overcome this limitation, we developed a CRISPR/Cpf1-based BE by fusing the rat cytosine deaminase APOBEC1 to a catalytically inactive version of Lachnospiraceae bacterium Cpf1. The base editor recognizes a T-rich PAM sequence and converts C to T in human cells with low levels of indels, non-C-to-T substitutions and off-target editing.
Project description:C-to-T base editing mediated by CRISPR/Cas9 base editors (BEs) needs a G/C-rich PAM and the editing fidelity is compromised by unwanted indels and non-C-to-T substitutions. We developed CRISPR/Cpf1-based BEs to recognize a T-rich PAM and induce efficient C-to-T editing with few indels and/or non-C-to-T substitutions. The requirement of editing fidelity in therapeutic-related trials necessitates the development of CRISPR/Cpf1-based BEs, which also facilitates base editing in A/T-rich regions.
Project description:CRISPR-enabled genetic screening is a powerful tool to discover genes that control T cell function and has nominated candidate target genes for immunotherapies1–6. However, new approaches are required to probe specific nucleotide sequences within key genes. Systematic mutagenesis in primary human T cells could discover alleles that tune specific phenotypes. DNA base editors are powerful tools to introduce targeted mutations with high efficiency7,8. Here, we develop a large-scale base editing mutagenesis platform with the goal of pinpointing nucleotides encoding amino acid residues that tune primary human T cell activation responses. We generated a library of ~117,000 sgRNAs targeting base editors to protein coding sites across 385 genes implicated in T cell function and systematically identified protein domains and specific amino acid residues that regulate T cell activation and cytokine production. We discovered a broad spectrum of alleles with variants encoding critical residues (in PIK3CD, VAV1, LCP2, PLCG1 and DGKZ and others), comprising both gain-of-function and loss-of-function mutations. We validated the functional effects of diverse alleles and further demonstrated that base edit hits could positively and negatively tune T cell cytotoxic function. Finally, higher-resolution screening using a base editor with relaxed PAM requirements9 (NG versus NGG) revealed specific structural domains and protein-protein interaction sites that can be targeted to tune T cell functions. Base editing screens in primary immune cells provide biochemical insights with potential to accelerate immunotherapy design.
Project description:As the toolbox of base editors (BEs) expands, selecting appropriate BE and guide RNA (gRNA) to achieve optimal editing efficiency and outcome for a given target becomes challenging. Here we construct a set of 10 adenine and cytosine BEs with high activity and maximal targeting scope, and comprehensively evaluate their editing profiles and properties head-to-head with 34,040 BE-gRNA-target combinations using genomically integrated long targets and tiling gRNA strategies. A deep learning model BEEP (Base Editing Efficiency Predictor) is built for predicting the editing efficiency and outcomes. Guided by BEEP, we experimentally install 3,558 disease-associated single nucleotide variants (SNVs), including 20.1% of target sites that would not be edited due to known protospacer adjacent motif (PAM) restriction, and predicted candidate BE-gRNA-target combinations for modeling 1,752,651 ClinVar SNVs. We also identify several cancer-associated SNVs that drive the resistance to BRAF inhibitors in melanoma. These efforts benchmark the performance and illuminate the capabilities of multiple highly useful BEs for interrogating functional SNVs.