RESUMO
CRISPR/Cas9 is a powerful genome editing tool, but its off-target cleavage activity can result in unintended adverse outcomes for therapeutic applications. Here we report the design of a simple tunable CRISPR controller in which a chemically inducible anti-CRISPR protein AcrIIA4 is engineered to disable Cas9 DNA binding upon the addition of trimethoprim. Dose-dependent control over Cas9 editing and dCas9 induction was achieved, which drastically improved the specificity and biosafety of the CRISPR/Cas9 system. We utilized the anti-CRISPR protein AcrIIA4 as a means to interfere with Cas9 DNA binding activity. By fusing AcrIIA4 to a ligand-inducible destabilization domain DHFR(DD), we show significantly reduced off-target activity in mammalian cells. Furthermore, we describe a new inducible promoter system Acr-OFF based on CRISPR controllers, which is regulated by an FDA-approved ligand trimethoprim.
Assuntos
Proteína 9 Associada à CRISPR/genética , Proteína 9 Associada à CRISPR/metabolismo , Sistemas CRISPR-Cas , Repetições Palindrômicas Curtas Agrupadas e Regularmente Espaçadas/genética , Edição de Genes/métodos , Streptococcus pyogenes/enzimologia , Trimetoprima/metabolismo , Contenção de Riscos Biológicos/métodos , DNA/metabolismo , Proteínas de Ligação a DNA/genética , Proteínas de Fluorescência Verde/genética , Proteínas de Fluorescência Verde/metabolismo , Células HEK293 , Humanos , Ligantes , Ligação Proteica , RNA Guia de Cinetoplastídeos/genética , TransfecçãoRESUMO
Genome editing critically relies on selective recognition of target sites. However, despite recent progress, the underlying search mechanism of genome-editing proteins is not fully understood in the context of cellular chromatin environments. Here, we use single-molecule imaging in live cells to directly study the behavior of CRISPR/Cas9 and TALEN. Our single-molecule imaging of genome-editing proteins reveals that Cas9 is less efficient in heterochromatin than TALEN because Cas9 becomes encumbered by local searches on non-specific sites in these regions. We find up to a fivefold increase in editing efficiency for TALEN compared to Cas9 in heterochromatin regions. Overall, our results show that Cas9 and TALEN use a combination of 3-D and local searches to identify target sites, and the nanoscopic granularity of local search determines the editing outcomes of the genome-editing proteins. Taken together, our results suggest that TALEN is a more efficient gene-editing tool than Cas9 for applications in heterochromatin.