Generation of Defined Genomic Modifications Using CRISPR-CAS9 in Human Pluripotent Stem Cells

Summary

This protocol provides a method to facilitate the generation of defined heterozygous or homozygous nucleotide changes using CRISPR-CAS9 in human pluripotent stem cells.

Abstract

Human pluripotent stem cells offer a powerful system to study gene function and model specific mutations relevant to disease. The generation of precise heterozygous genetic modifications is challenging due to CRISPR-CAS9 mediated indel formation in the second allele. Here, we demonstrate a protocol to help overcome this difficulty by using two repair templates in which only one expresses the desired sequence change, while both templates contain silent mutations to prevent re-cutting and indel formation. This methodology is most advantageous for gene editing coding regions of DNA to generate isogenic control and mutant human stem cell lines for studying human disease and biology. In addition, optimization of transfection and screening methodologies have been performed to reduce labor and cost of a gene editing experiment. Overall, this protocol is widely applicable to many genome editing projects utilizing the human pluripotent stem cell model.

Introduction

Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are valuable tools for modeling human disease due to their capacity for renewal, while maintaining the ability to generate cell types of different lineages^1,2,3,4. These models open the possibility to interrogate gene function, and understand how specific mutations and phenotypes are related to various diseases^5,6. However, to understand how a specific alteration is linked to a particular phenotype, the use....

Protocol

1. Design and construction of guide RNA (gRNA)

NOTE: Each gRNA is made up of two 60 base pair (bp) oligonucleotides that are annealed to generate a 100 bp double stranded (ds) oligonucleotide (Figure 1A-C). The timeline for gRNA design, generation, and testing cutting efficiency is approximately 2 weeks (Figure 2).

1. Select the DNA region of interest to be genome edited and identify 3-4 23 bp sequences that .......

Discussion

In this protocol, the use of CRISPR-CAS9 along with two ssODN repair templates to generate specific heterozygous or homozygous genome changes is demonstrated in human pluripotent stem cells. This method resulted in the successful generation of isogenic cell lines expressing heterozygous genomic changes with an efficiency close to 10%. This protocol has been optimized for both human ESCs and iPSCs grown on irradiated MEFs which support cell growth and survival after culturing cells at low density after cell sorting. Cell .......

Materials

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
5-ml polystyrene round-bottom tube with cell-strainer cap	Corning	352235
6-well polystyrene tissue culture dishes	Corning	353046
AflII restriction endonuclease	New England Biolabs	R0520
Agarose	VWR	N605
DMEM/F12 medium	ThermoFisher	11320033
dNTPs	Roche	11969064001
Fluorescence-activated cell sorter (FACS) apparatus
Gel extraction kit	Macherey-Nagel	740609
Gibson Assembly Kit	New England Biolabs	E2611
gRNA_Cloning Vector	Addgene	41824
LB agar plates containing 50 μg/ml kanamycin
Lipofectamine Stem Reagent	ThermoFisher	(STEM00001)
Matrigel Growth Factor Reduced (GFR)	Corning	354230
Murine embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs)
Nucleospin Gel Extraction and PCR Clean-up Kit	Macherey-Nagel	740609
Orbital shaking incubator
pCas9_GFP vector	Addgene	44719
PCR strip tubes	USA Scientific	1402-2900
Phusion High Fidelity DNA Polymerase and 5× Phusion buffer	New England Biolabs	M0530
PurelinkTM Quick Plasmid Miniprep Kit	Invitrogen	K210011
Proteinase K	Qiagen	Qiagen 19133
StellarTM electrocompetent Escherichia coli cells	Takara	636763
SOC medium	New England Biolabs	B9020S
TrypLE Express Enzyme	ThermoFisher	12605036
Y-27632 dihydrochloride/ROCK inhibitor (ROCKi)	Tocris	1254