RESUMO
There have been many engineered Cas9 variants that were developed to minimize unintended cleavage of off-target DNAs, but detailed mechanism for the way they regulate the target specificity through DNA:RNA heteroduplexation remains poorly understood. We used single-molecule FRET assay to follow the dynamics of DNA:RNA heteroduplexation for various engineered Cas9 variants with respect to on-target and off-target DNAs. Just like wild-type Cas9, these engineered Cas9 variants exhibit a strong correlation between their conformational structure and nuclease activity. Compared with wild-type Cas9, the fraction of the cleavage-competent state dropped more rapidly with increasing base-pair mismatch, which gives rise to their enhanced target specificity. We proposed a reaction model to quantitatively analyze the degree of off-target discrimination during the successive process of R-loop expansion. We found that the critical specificity enhancement step is activated during DNA:RNA heteroduplexation for evoCas9 and HypaCas9, while it occurs in the post-heteroduplexation stage for Cas9-HF1, eCas9, and Sniper-Cas9. This study sheds new light on the conformational dynamics behind the target specificity of Cas9, which will help strengthen its rational designing principles in the future.
Assuntos
Proteína 9 Associada à CRISPR/genética , DNA/genética , RNA/genética , Imagem Individual de Molécula/métodos , Pareamento de Bases , Proteína 9 Associada à CRISPR/química , Proteína 9 Associada à CRISPR/metabolismo , Clonagem Molecular , DNA/química , DNA/metabolismo , Escherichia coli/genética , Escherichia coli/metabolismo , Transferência Ressonante de Energia de Fluorescência , Expressão Gênica , Vetores Genéticos/química , Vetores Genéticos/metabolismo , Células HEK293 , Proteínas de Homeodomínio/genética , Proteínas de Homeodomínio/metabolismo , Humanos , Modelos Moleculares , Mutação , Hibridização de Ácido Nucleico , Conformação Proteica , Engenharia de Proteínas/métodos , RNA/química , RNA/metabolismo , Proteínas Recombinantes/química , Proteínas Recombinantes/genética , Proteínas Recombinantes/metabolismo , Especificidade por Substrato , Fatores de Transcrição/genética , Fatores de Transcrição/metabolismoRESUMO
BACKGROUND: Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) is an experimental technique to study structure-function relationship of biomolecules. AFM provides images of biomolecules at nanometer resolution. High-speed AFM experiments produce a series of images following dynamics of biomolecules. To further understand biomolecular functions, information on three-dimensional (3D) structures is beneficial. METHOD: We aim to recover 3D information from an AFM image by computational modeling. The AFM image includes only low-resolution representation of a molecule; therefore we represent the structures by a coarse grained model (Gaussian mixture model). Using Monte-Carlo sampling, candidate models are generated to increase similarity between AFM images simulated from the models and target AFM image. RESULTS: The algorithm was tested on two proteins to model their conformational transitions. Using a simulated AFM image as reference, the algorithm can produce a low-resolution 3D model of the target molecule. Effect of molecular orientations captured in AFM images on the 3D modeling performance was also examined and it is shown that similar accuracy can be obtained for many orientations. CONCLUSIONS: The proposed algorithm can generate 3D low-resolution protein models, from which conformational transitions observed in AFM images can be interpreted in more detail. GENERAL SIGNIFICANCE: High-speed AFM experiments allow us to directly observe biomolecules in action, which provides insights on biomolecular function through dynamics. However, as only partial structural information can be obtained from AFM data, this new AFM based hybrid modeling method would be useful to retrieve 3D information of the entire biomolecule.