Upgraded CRISPR/Cas9 tools for tissue-specific mutagenesis in <i>Drosophila</i>
Gabriel T. Koreman, Yineng Xu, Qinan Hu, Zijing Zhang, Sarah E. Allen, Mariana F. Wolfner, Bei Wang, Chun Han
Abstract
Significance Understanding the mechanisms of development and disease often requires the ability to remove gene function from specific tissues. The CRISPR/Cas9 system can mutate any gene by Cas9-mediated DNA cutting, but current tissue-specific CRISPR/Cas9 tools still have much room for improvement. Here, we report a set of tools that significantly improve the efficiency, flexibility, and analytic power of tissue-specific CRISPR/Cas9 in Drosophila . Proper components of these tools can be adopted to achieve the highest mutagenic efficiency in the germline or in somatic tissues, to label mutant cells genetically, or to convert existing Gal4 lines into tissue-specific Cas9 lines. These tools can be adapted easily to other organisms.