1. Stimulation of CRISPR-mediated homology-directed repair by an engineered RAD18 variant.
- Author
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Nambiar TS, Billon P, Diedenhofen G, Hayward SB, Taglialatela A, Cai K, Huang JW, Leuzzi G, Cuella-Martin R, Palacios A, Gupta A, Egli D, and Ciccia A
- Subjects
- Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, DNA Damage, DNA-Binding Proteins chemistry, DNA-Binding Proteins genetics, Gene Editing, Humans, Protein Domains, Protein Engineering, Recombinational DNA Repair, Ubiquitin-Protein Ligases chemistry, Ubiquitin-Protein Ligases genetics, DNA-Binding Proteins metabolism, Ubiquitin-Protein Ligases metabolism
- Abstract
Precise editing of genomic DNA can be achieved upon repair of CRISPR-induced DNA double-stranded breaks (DSBs) by homology-directed repair (HDR). However, the efficiency of this process is limited by DSB repair pathways competing with HDR, such as non-homologous end joining (NHEJ). Here we individually express in human cells 204 open reading frames involved in the DNA damage response (DDR) and determine their impact on CRISPR-mediated HDR. From these studies, we identify RAD18 as a stimulator of CRISPR-mediated HDR. By defining the RAD18 domains required to promote HDR, we derive an enhanced RAD18 variant (e18) that stimulates CRISPR-mediated HDR in multiple human cell types, including embryonic stem cells. Mechanistically, e18 induces HDR by suppressing the localization of the NHEJ-promoting factor 53BP1 to DSBs. Altogether, this study identifies e18 as an enhancer of CRISPR-mediated HDR and highlights the promise of engineering DDR factors to augment the efficiency of precision genome editing.
- Published
- 2019
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