Site-Specific Cleavage of RNAs Derived from the PIM1 3′-UTR by a Metal-Free Artificial Ribonuclease

Oligonucleotide conjugates of tris(2-aminobenzimidazole) have been reported previously to cleave complementary RNA strands with high levels of sequence and site specificity. The RNA substrates used in these studies were oligonucleotides not longer than 29-mers. Here we show that ~150–400-mer model transcripts derived from the 3′-untranslated region of the PIM1 mRNA reacted with rates and specificities comparable to those of short oligonucleotide substrates. The replacement of DNA by DNA/LNA mixmers further increased the cleavage rate. Tris(2-aminobenzimidazoles) were designed to interact with phosphates and phosphate esters. A cell, however, contains large amounts of phosphorylated species that may cause competitive inhibition of RNA cleavage. It is thus important to note that no loss in reaction rates was observed in phosphate buffer. This opens the way to in-cell applications for this type of artificial nuclease. Furthermore, we disclose a new synthetic method giving access to tris(2-aminobenzimidazoles) in multigram amounts.

A tailored biocatalyst achieved by the rational anchoring of imidazole groups on a natural polymer: furnishing a potential artificial nuclease by sustainable materials engineering

Biocatalysts were obtained by anchoring imidazole groups on the biocompatible gum arabic, with catalytic activity in dephosphorylation reactions and cleavage of plasmid DNA.

Integrative Analysis of CRISPR/Cas9 Target Sites in the HumanHBBGene

Recently, the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) system has emerged as a powerful customizable artificial nuclease to facilitate precise genetic correction for tissue regeneration and isogenic disease modeling. However, previous studies reported substantial off-target activities of CRISPR system in human cells, and the enormous putative off-target sites are labor-intensive to be validated experimentally, thus motivating bioinformatics methods for rational design of CRISPR system and prediction of its potential off-target effects. Here, we describe an integrative analytical process to identify specific CRISPR target sites in the humanβ-globin gene (HBB) and predict their off-target effects. Our method includes off-target analysis in both coding and noncoding regions, which was neglected by previous studies. It was found that the CRISPR target sites in the introns have fewer off-target sites in the coding regions than those in the exons. Remarkably, target sites containing certain transcriptional factor motif have enriched binding sites of relevant transcriptional factor in their off-target sets. We also found that the intron sites have fewer SNPs, which leads to less variation of CRISPR efficiency in different individuals during clinical applications. Our studies provide a standard analytical procedure to select specific CRISPR targets for genetic correction.