A novel fungal gene regulation system based on inducible VPR-dCas9 and nucleosome map-guided sgRNA positioning.

ABSTRACT: Programmable transcriptional regulation is a powerful tool to study gene functions. Current methods to selectively regulate target genes are mainly based on promoter exchange or on overexpressing transcriptional activators. To expand the discovery toolbox, we designed a dCas9-based RNA-guided synthetic transcription activation system for Aspergillus nidulans that uses enzymatically disabled "dead" Cas9 fused to three consecutive activation domains (VPR-dCas9). The dCas9-encoding gene is under the control of an estrogen-responsive promoter to allow induction timing and to avoid possible negative effects by strong constitutive expression of the highly active VPR domains. Especially in silent genomic regions, facultative heterochromatin and strictly positioned nucleosomes can constitute a rel

SUBMITTER: Schuller A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7595996 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature