Engineered CRISPRa enables programmable eukaryote-like gene activation in bacteria.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 31451697.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-019-11479-0 and PMC identifier 6710252.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Transcriptional regulation by nuclease-deficient CRISPR/Cas is a popular and valuable tool for routine control of gene expression. CRISPR interference in bacteria can be reliably achieved with high efficiencies. Yet, options for CRISPR activation (CRISPRa) remained limited in flexibility and activity because they relied on σ<sup>70</sup> promoters. Here we report a eukaryote-like bacterial CRISPRa system based on σ<sup>54</sup>-dependent promoters, which supports long distance, and hence multi-input regulation with high dynamic ranges. Our CRISPRa device can activate σ<sup>54</sup>-dependent promoters with biotechnology relevance in non-model bacteria. It also supports orthogonal gene regulation on multiple levels. Combining our CRISPRa with dxCas9 further expands flexibility in DNA targeting, and boosts dynamic ranges into regimes that enable construction of cascaded CRISPRa circuits. Application-wise, we construct a reusable scanning platform for readily optimizing metabolic pathways without library reconstructions. This eukaryote-like CRISPRa system is therefore a powerful and versatile synthetic biology tool for diverse research and industrial applications.
Medical subject headings
- CRISPR-Cas Systems
- Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats
- Escherichia coli
- Escherichia coli Proteins
- Protein Engineering
- RNA Polymerase Sigma 54