UMMS Affiliation

RNA Therapeutics Institute; Program in Molecular Medicine; Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences

Publication Date

2020-11-01

Document Type

Article

Disciplines

Genomics | Molecular Biology | Molecular Genetics

Abstract

CRISPR genome editing has revolutionized genetics in many organisms. In the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans one injection into each of the two gonad arms of an adult hermaphrodite exposes hundreds of meiotic germ cells to editing mixtures, permitting the recovery of multiple indels or small precision edits from each successfully injected animal. Unfortunately, particularly for long insertions, editing efficiencies can vary widely, necessitating multiple injections, and often requiring co-selection strategies. Here we show that melting double stranded DNA (dsDNA) donor molecules prior to injection increases the frequency of precise homology-directed repair (HDR) by several fold for longer edits. We describe troubleshooting strategies that enable consistently high editing efficiencies resulting, for example, in up to 100 independent GFP knock-ins from a single injected animal. These efficiencies make C. elegans by far the easiest metazoan to genome edit, removing barriers to the use and adoption of this facile system as a model for understanding animal biology.

Keywords

CRISPR, Donor DNA, Genome Editing, HDR

Rights and Permissions

Copyright © 2020 Ghanta and Mello. Available freely online through the author-supported open access option. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

DOI of Published Version

10.1534/genetics.120.303564

Source

Ghanta KS, Mello CC. Melting dsDNA Donor Molecules Greatly Improves Precision Genome Editing in Caenorhabditis elegans. Genetics. 2020 Nov;216(3):643-650. doi: 10.1534/genetics.120.303564. Epub 2020 Sep 22. PMID: 32963112; PMCID: PMC7648581. Link to article on publisher's site

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Genetics

Comments

This article is based on a previously available preprint on bioRxiv that is also available in eScholarship@UMMS.

Related Resources

Link to Article in PubMed

PubMed ID

32963112

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Download

Share

COinS