Reviewer
Daan C. Swarts
  • Post-Doc, Department of Biochemistry, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Research fields
  • Biochemistry
Using CRISPR/Cas9 for Large Fragment Deletions in Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Authors:  Huanhuan Hao, Jing Huang, Tongtong Liu, Hui Tang and Liping Zhang, date: 07/20/2017, view: 12854, Q&A: 0
CRISPR/Cas9 (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats/CRISPR-associated protein 9) systems have emerged as a powerful tool for genome editing in many organisms. The wide use of CRISPR/Cas9 systems may be due to the fact that these systems contain a simple guide RNA (sgRNA) that is relatively easy to design and they are very versatile with the ability to simultaneously target multiple genes within a cell (Varshney et al., 2015). We have developed a CRISPR/Cas9 system to delete large genomic fragments (exceeding 30 kb) in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. One application of this technology is to study the effects of large-scale deletions of non-essential genes which may give insight into the function of gene clusters within chromosomes at the molecular level. In this protocol, we describe the general procedures for large fragment deletion in S. cerevisiae using CRISPR/Cas9 including: how to design CRISPR arrays and how to construct Cas9-crRNA expression plasmids as well as how to detect mutations introduced by the system within S. cerevisiae cells.
Expression and Purification of the Cas10-Csm Complex from Staphylococci
Authors:  Lucy Chou-Zheng and Asma Hatoum-Aslan, date: 06/05/2017, view: 10489, Q&A: 0
CRISPR-Cas (Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats-CRISPR-associated proteins) is a class of prokaryotic immune systems that degrade foreign nucleic acids in a sequence-specific manner. These systems rely upon ribonucleoprotein complexes composed of Cas nucleases and small CRISPR RNAs (crRNAs). Staphylococcus epidermidis and Staphylococcus aureus are bacterial residents on human skin that are also leading causes of antibiotic resistant infections (Lowy, 1998; National Nosocomial Infections Surveillance, 2004; Otto, 2009). Many staphylococci possess Type III-A CRISPR-Cas systems (Marraffini and Sontheimer, 2008; Cao et al., 2016), which have been shown to prevent plasmid transfer and protect against viral predators (Goldberg et al., 2014; Hatoum-Aslan et al., 2014; Samai et al., 2015) in these organisms. Thus, gaining a mechanistic understanding of these systems in the native staphylococcal background can lead to important insights into the factors that impact the evolution and survival of these pathogens. Type III-A CRISPR-Cas systems encode a five-subunit effector complex called Cas10-Csm (Hatoum-Aslan et al., 2013). Here, we describe a protocol for the expression and purification of Cas10-Csm from its native S. epidermidis background or a heterologous S. aureus background. The method consists of a two-step purification protocol involving Ni2+-affinity chromatography and a DNA affinity biotin pull-down, which together yield a pure preparation of the Cas10-Csm complex. This approach has been used previously to analyze the effects of mutations on Cas10-Csm complex integrity (Hatoum-Aslan et al., 2014), crRNA formation (Hatoum-Aslan et al., 2013), and to detect binding partners that directly interact with the core Cas10-Csm complex (Walker et al., 2016). Importantly, this approach can be easily adapted for use in other Staphylococcus species to probe and understand their native Type III-A CRISPR-Cas systems.
Targeted Nucleotide Substitution in Mammalian Cell by Target-AID
Authors:  Takayuki Arazoe, Keiji Nishida and Akihiko Kondo, date: 06/05/2017, view: 18529, Q&A: 0
Programmable RNA-guided nucleases based on CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats)-Cas (CRISPR-associated protein) systems have been applied to various type of cells as powerful genome editing tools. By using activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) in place of the nuclease activity of the CRISPR/Cas9 system, we have developed a genome editing tool for targeted nucleotide substitution (C to T or G to A) without donor DNA template (Figure 1; Nishida et al., 2016). Here we describe the detailed method for Target-AID to perform programmable point mutagenesis in the genome of mammalian cells. A specific method for targeting the hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT) gene in Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cell was described here as an example, while this method principally should be applicable to any gene of interest in a wide range of cell types.


Figure 1. Schematic illustration for Target-AID and its targetable site. In a guide-RNA (gRNA)-dependent manner, PmCDA1 fused to nCas9 (D10A) via a linker performs programmable cytidine mutagenesis around -21 to -16 positions relative to PAM sequence on the non-complementary strand in mammalian cells. The targetable site was determined based on the efficient base substitution (> 20%) observed in the previous work.

Conjugation Assay for Testing CRISPR-Cas Anti-plasmid Immunity in Staphylococci
Authors:  Forrest C. Walker and Asma Hatoum-Aslan, date: 05/05/2017, view: 11644, Q&A: 0
CRISPR-Cas is a prokaryotic adaptive immune system that prevents uptake of mobile genetic elements such as bacteriophages and plasmids. Plasmid transfer between bacteria is of particular clinical concern due to increasing amounts of antibiotic resistant pathogens found in humans as a result of transfer of resistance plasmids within and between species. Testing the ability of CRISPR-Cas systems to block plasmid transfer in various conditions or with CRISPR-Cas mutants provides key insights into the functionality and mechanisms of CRISPR-Cas as well as how antibiotic resistance spreads within bacterial communities. Here, we describe a method for quantifying the impact of CRISPR-Cas on the efficiency of plasmid transfer by conjugation. While this method is presented in Staphylococcus species, it could be more broadly used for any conjugative prokaryote.
Transformation of Thermus Species by Natural Competence
Authors:  Alba Blesa and José Berenguer, date: 11/20/2016, view: 9975, Q&A: 0
Many Thermus species harbour genomes scourged with horizontally transferred signatures. Thermus thermophilus (Tth) has been characterized as naturally competent. The transformation protocol described here is based on the maximum DNA uptake rates registered at mid-exponential phase (OD600 0.3-0.4). Here we describe the stepwise protocol followed for transformation of both plasmids and linearized genomic DNA, of which the latter can be employed as an alternative method to electroporation to introduce mutations or to generate gene deletions in Thermus isolates, for instance.
Cell-to-cell DNA Transfer among Thermus Species
Authors:  Alba Blesa and José Berenguer, date: 11/20/2016, view: 8939, Q&A: 0
The ability to transfer DNA via direct cell-to-cell contact-dependent process similar to conjugation has been described in Thermus thermophilus (Tth). Here, we detail the mating experiment protocol involving the lateral transfer of thermostable antibiotic resistance markers (i.e., kanamycin: KmR; hygromycin: HygR) between Thermus cells, enabling the selection and quantification of the transfer frequencies. Briefly, liquid cultures of both mates are mixed and laid onto a nitrocellulose filter on a TB plate. After incubation at 60 °C, filters are resuspended upon selective plating. The contribution of DNA uptake by transformation is abolished by the addition of DNase I to the mix. This protocol can be used for the transfer of large DNA fragments (> 10 kb) to Thermus species.
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