Peptide Nucleic Acid-Mediated Regulation of CRISPR-Cas9 Specificity.

ABSTRACT: Although CRISPR-Cas9 gene therapies have proven to be a powerful tool across many applications, improvements are necessary to increase the specificity of this technology. Cas9 cutting in off-target sites remains an issue that limits CRISPR's application in human-based therapies. Treatment of autosomal dominant diseases also remains a challenge when mutant alleles differ from the wild-type sequence by only one base pair. Here, we utilize synthetic peptide nucleic acids (PNAs) that bind selected spacer sequences in the guide RNA (gRNA) to increase Cas9 specificity up to 10-fold. We interrogate variations in PNA length, binding position, and degree of homology with the gRNA. Our findings reveal that PNAs bound in the region distal to the protospacer adjacent motif (PAM) site effectively enhan

SUBMITTER: Carufe KEW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11564683 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature