Cytosine base editors (CBEs) enable efficient cytidine-to-thymidine (C-to-T) substitutions at targeted loci without double-stranded breaks. However, current CBEs edit all Cs within their activity windows, generating undesired bystander mutations. In the most challenging circumstance, when a bystander C is adjacent to the targeted C , existing base editors fail to discriminate them and edit both Cs. To improve the precision of CBE, we identified and engineered the human APOBEC3G (A3G) deaminase; when fused to the Cas9 nickase, the resulting A3G-BEs exhibit selective editing of the second C in the 5′-C C -3′ motif in human cells. Our A3G-BEs could install a single disease-associated C-to-T substitution with high precision. The percentage of perfectly modified alleles is more than 6000-fold for disease correction and more than 600-fold for disease modeling compared with BE4max. On the basis of the two-cell embryo injection method and RNA sequencing analysis, our A3G-BEs showed minimum genome- and transcriptome-wide off-target effects, achieving high targeting fidelity.
Efficient CRISPR-Cas9 based cytosine base editors for phytopathogenic bacteria
Phytopathogenic bacteria play important roles in plant productivity, and developments in gene editing have potential for enhancing the genetic tools for the identification of critical genes in the pathogenesis process. CRISPR-based genome editing variants have been developed for a wide range of applications in eukaryotes and prokaryotes. However, the unique mechanisms of different hosts restrict the wide adaptation for specific applications. Here, CRISPR-dCas9 (dead Cas9) and nCas9 (Cas9 nickase) deaminase vectors were developed for a broad range of phytopathogenic bacteria. A gene for a dCas9 or nCas9, cytosine deaminase CDA1, and glycosylase inhibitor fusion protein (cytosine base editor, or CBE) was applied to base editing under the control of different promoters. Results showed that the RecA promoter led to nearly 100% modification of the target region. When residing on the broad host range plasmid pHM1, CBERecApis efficient in creating base edits in strains of
- Publication Date:
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10391591
- Journal Name:
- Communications Biology
- Volume:
- 6
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2399-3642
- Publisher:
- Nature Publishing Group
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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