A Single-Chain Photoswitchable CRISPR-Cas9 Architecture for Light-Inducible Gene Editing and Transcription

• Published in: ACS chemical biology Vol. 13; no. 2; pp. 443 - 448
• Main Authors: Zhou, Xin X, Zou, Xinzhi, Chung, Hokyung K, Gao, Yuchen, Liu, Yanxia, Qi, Lei S, Lin, Michael Z
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Chemical Society 16.02.2018
• Subjects: CRISPR-Associated Protein 9 - chemistry; CRISPR-Associated Protein 9 - genetics; CRISPR-Associated Protein 9 - radiation effects; CRISPR-Associated Proteins - chemistry; CRISPR-Associated Proteins - genetics; CRISPR-Associated Proteins - radiation effects; CRISPR-Cas Systems - genetics; CRISPR-Cas Systems - radiation effects; Gene Editing - methods; Gene Expression Regulation; Green Fluorescent Proteins - genetics; Green Fluorescent Proteins - radiation effects; HEK293 Cells; Humans; Letters; Light; Mutation; Protein Domains - genetics; Protein Engineering; Streptococcus pyogenes - enzymology; Transcription, Genetic
• ISSN: 1554-8929; 1554-8937
• DOI: 10.1021/acschembio.7b00603

Optical control of CRISPR-Cas9-derived proteins would be useful for restricting gene editing or transcriptional regulation to desired times and places. Optical control of Cas9 functions has been achieved with photouncageable unnatural amino acids or by using light-induced protein interactions to reconstitute Cas9-mediated functions from two polypeptides. However, these methods have only been applied to one Cas9 species and have not been used for optical control of different perturbations at two genes. Here, we use photodissociable dimeric fluorescent protein domains to engineer single-chain photoswitchable Cas9 (ps-Cas9) proteins in which the DNA-binding cleft is occluded at baseline and opened upon illumination. This design successfully controlled different species and functional variants of Cas9, mediated transcriptional activation more robustly than previous optogenetic methods, and enabled light-induced transcription of one gene and editing of another in the same cells. Thus, a single-chain photoswitchable architecture provides a general method to control a variety of Cas9-mediated functions.