Harnessing noncanonical crRNA for highly efficient genome editing.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38714643.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-48012-x and PMC identifier 11076584.
- 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
The CRISPR-Cas12a system is more advantageous than the widely used CRISPR-Cas9 system in terms of specificity and multiplexibility. However, its on-target editing efficiency is typically much lower than that of the CRISPR-Cas9 system. Here we improved its on-target editing efficiency by simply incorporating 2-aminoadenine (base Z, which alters canonical Watson-Crick base pairing) into the crRNA to increase the binding affinity between crRNA and its complementary DNA target. The resulting CRISPR-Cas12a (named zCRISPR-Cas12a thereafter) shows an on-target editing efficiency comparable to that of the CRISPR-Cas9 system but with much lower off-target effects than the CRISPR-Cas9 system in mammalian cells. In addition, zCRISPR-Cas12a can be used for precise gene knock-in and highly efficient multiplex genome editing. Overall, the zCRISPR-Cas12a system is superior to the CRISPR-Cas9 system, and our simple crRNA engineering strategy may be extended to other CRISPR-Cas family members as well as their derivatives.
Medical subject headings
- Gene Editing
- CRISPR-Cas Systems