Project description:Chromosomal rearrangements including large DNA-fragment inversions, deletions, and duplications by Cas9 with paired sgRNAs are important to investigate structural genome variations and developmental gene regulation, but little is known about the underlying mechanism. Here we report that disrupting CtIP or FANCD2, which is thought to function in NHEJ, enhances precise DNA-fragment deletion. In addition, by analyzing the inserted nucleotides at the junctions of DNA-fragment deletions, inversions, duplications, and characterizing the cleaved products, we find that Cas9 endonucleolytically cleaves the noncomplementary strand with a flexible scissile profile upstream of -3 position of the PAM site in vivo and in vitro, generating overhanged DSB ends. Moreover, we find that engineered Cas9 nucleases have distinct cleavage profiles. Finally, Cas9-mediated nucleotide insertions are nonrandom and are equal to the combined sequences upstream of both PAM sites with predicted frequencies. Thus, precise and predictable DNA-fragment editing could be achieved by perturbing DNA repair genes and using appropriate PAM configurations. These findings have important implications regarding 3D chromatin folding and enhancer insulation during gene regulation.
2018-07-26 | GSE113698 | GEO
Project description:Bridge RNAs direct programmable recombination of target and donor DNA
Project description:HELB is a human helicase involved in initiation of DNA replication, the replication stress response, and regulation of double-strand DNA break repair. rs75770066 is a low-frequency single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the HELB gene that affects age at natural menopause. rs75770066 results in a D506G substitution in a HELB specific insertion in the 1A domain of the helicase that contains amino acids known to interact with RPA. We found that this amino acid change has no effect on the enzymatic activity of HELB but dramatically impairs the cellular function of HELB. D506G HELB exhibits impaired interaction with RPA, which likely results in the effects of rs75770066 as this reduces recruitment of HELB to sites of DNA damage. Reduced recruitment of D506G-HELB to double-strand DNA breaks and the concomitant increase in homologous recombination likely alters the levels of meiotic recombination, which affects the viability of gametes. Because menopause occurs when oocyte levels drop below a minimum threshold, altered repair of meiotic double-stranded DNA breaks has the potential to directly affect the age at natural menopause.