Generation of two homozygous SHOX2 knock-out human induced pluripotent stem cell lines using CRISPR/Cas9

SHOX2 is a homeobox transcription factor associated with atrial fibrillation (AF) and sinus node dysfunction. Here, we generated two homozygous SHOX2 knock-out hiPSC lines from a healthy control line and a corrected AF patient line (disease-specific SHOX2 mutation corrected to WT) using CRISPR/Cas9. These cell lines maintained pluripotency, an ability to differentiate into all three germlayers and a normal karyotype, presenting a valuable tool to investigate the impact of a full SHOX2 knock-out with respect to arrhythmogenic diseases on a cellular level.

A large-scale resource for tissue-specific CRISPR mutagenesis in Drosophila

Genetic screens are powerful tools for the functional annotation of genomes. In the context of multicellular organisms, interrogation of gene function is greatly facilitated by methods that allow spatial and temporal control of gene abrogation. Here, we describe a large-scale transgenic short guide (sg) RNA library for efficient CRISPR-based disruption of specific target genes in a constitutive or conditional manner. The library consists currently of more than 2600 plasmids and 1700 fly lines with a focus on targeting kinases, phosphatases and transcription factors, each expressing two sgRNAs under control of the Gal4/UAS system. We show that conditional CRISPR mutagenesis is robust across many target genes and can be efficiently employed in various somatic tissues, as well as the germline. In order to prevent artefacts commonly associated with excessive amounts of Cas9 protein, we have developed a series of novel UAS-Cas9 transgenes, which allow fine tuning of Cas9 expression to achieve high gene editing activity without detectable toxicity. Functional assays, as well as direct sequencing of genomic sgRNA target sites, indicates that the vast majority of transgenic sgRNA lines mediate efficient gene disruption. Furthermore, we conducted the so far largest fully transgenic CRISPR screen in any metazoan organism, which further supported the high efficiency and accuracy of our library and revealed many so far uncharacterized genes essential for development.