Abstract
Abstract
Background
The CRISPR/Cas12a and CRISPR/Cas13d systems are widely used for fundamental research and hold great potential for future clinical applications. However, the short half-life of guide RNAs (gRNAs), particularly free gRNAs without Cas nuclease binding, limits their editing efficiency and durability.
Results
Here, we engineer circular free gRNAs (cgRNAs) to increase their stability, and thus availability for Cas12a and Cas13d processing and loading, to boost editing. cgRNAs increases the efficiency of Cas12a-based transcription activators and genomic DNA cleavage by approximately 2.1- to 40.2-fold for single gene editing and 1.7- to 2.1-fold for multiplexed gene editing than their linear counterparts, without compromising specificity, across multiple sites and cell lines. Similarly, the RNA interference efficiency of Cas13d is increased by around 1.8-fold. In in vivo mouse liver, cgRNAs are more potent in activating gene expression and cleaving genomic DNA.
Conclusions
CgRNAs enable more efficient programmable DNA and RNA editing for Cas12a and Cas13d with broad applicability for fundamental research and gene therapy.
Funder
National Natural Science Foundation of China
GuangDong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation
Fellowship of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation
National Key R&D Program of China
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC