A PLM-assisted physics-driven approach is presented that utilizes atomistic molecular dynamics simulations and automated path searching to efficiently obtain the complete kinetic insights, including the transition state structures, for the conformational changes of Cas before DNA cleavage.
In this review, a review of recent in vivo hypermutation tools that enable rapid sampling of the vast evolutionary landscape, all while supporting simultaneous selection of the best proteins within living organisms are discussed.
A protein design strategy is used that couples a structure-guided inverse-folding model with evolution-informed residue constraints to generate active, divergent variants of TnpB, a minimal CRISPR-Cas12-like nuclease, termed SynTnpBs, establishing a strategy for creating non-natural RNA-guided nucleases and conformationally active nucleic acid binders, enlarging the designable protein space.
Petr Skopintsev, Isabel Esain-Garcia, Evan C. DeTurk et al.· Science· 2 citations
Natural variation in PAM recognition among SaCas9 orthologs is analyzed and StaCas9 is identified as a compact and efficient nuclease recognizing an NNG PAM, establishing StaCas9 as a high-performance genome-editing tool for therapeutic applications.
CRISPR interference (CRISPRi) is a powerful technology for studying loss-of-function phenotypes, enabling transient and reversible control of gene expression without the introduction of double-stranded DNA breaks. The cost of conducting large-scale CRISPR screens necessitates the selection of effective and specific single-guide RNAs for the design of compact libraries. While several genome-wide CRISPRi-Cas9 libraries have been created, updates to transcript annotations, the generation of higher-resolution chromatin accessibility datasets, and the development of newer on-target prediction models motivate an updated CRISPRi library design approach. Here, we generate large CRISPRi datasets tiling essential and nonessential genes. We compare the performance of multiple KRAB domain systems, develop an updated CRISPRi-specific on-target scoring scheme, and quantitatively characterize off-target effects associated with seed-sequence patterns. We leverage these findings to design an optimized CRISPRi-Cas9 library, Katsano, and validate its performance with genome-wide viability screens.
Smriti Srikanth, Fengyi Zheng, Laura M Drepanos et al.· Cell Genomics· 0 citations
It is demonstrated that local nucleosome sequence and structure profoundly influence Cas nuclease accessibility and specificity, with HIFIv1 emerging as the top-performing nuclease for nucleosomal targets, while evoSpCas9 excelled in exposed contexts.
Christopher Handelmann, Erin Skeens, George P. Lisi et al.· Frontiers in Genome Editing· 0 citations