WT-PE: Prime editing with nuclease wild-type Cas9 enables versatile large-scale genome editing
Rui Tao, Yanhong Wang, Yun Hu, Yaoge Jiao, Lifang Zhou, Lurong Jiang, Li Li, Xingyu He, Min Li, Yamei Yu, Qiang Chen, Shaohua Yao
Abstract
Large scale genomic aberrations including duplication, deletion, translocation, and other structural changes are the cause of a subtype of hereditary genetic disorders and contribute to onset or progress of cancer. The current prime editor, PE2, consisting of Cas9-nickase and reverse transcriptase enables efficient editing of genomic deletion and insertion, however, at small scale. Here, we designed a novel prime editor by fusing reverse transcriptase (RT) to nuclease wild-type Cas9 (WT-PE) to edit large genomic fragment. WT-PE system simultaneously introduced a double strand break (DSB) and a single 3' extended flap in the target site. Coupled with paired prime editing guide RNAs (pegRNAs) that have complementary sequences in their 3' terminus while target different genomic regions, WT-PE produced bi-directional prime editing, which enabled efficient and versatile large-scale genome editing, including large fragment deletion up to 16.8 megabase (Mb) pairs and chromosomal translocation. Therefore, our WT-PE system has great potential to model or treat diseases related to large-fragment aberrations.