Key sequence features of CRISPR RNA for dual-guide CRISPR-Cas9 ribonucleoprotein complexes assembled with wild-type or HiFi Cas9

Abstract

Specific sequence features of the protospacer and protospacer-adjacent motif (PAM) are critical for efficient cleavage by CRISPR-Cas9, but current knowledge is largely derived from single-guide RNA (sgRNA) systems assessed in cultured cells. In this study, we sought to determine gRNA sequence features of a more native CRISPR-Cas9 ribonucleoprotein (RNP) complex with dual-guide RNAs (dgRNAs) composed of crRNA and tracrRNA, which has been used increasingly in recent CRISPR-Cas9 applications, particularly in zebrafish. Using both wild-type and HiFi SpCas9, we determined on-target cleavage efficiencies of 51 crRNAs in zebrafish embryos by assessing indel occurrence. Statistical analysis of these data identified novel position-specific mononucleotide features relevant to cleavage efficiencies throughout the protospacer sequence that may be unique to CRISPR-Cas9 RNPs pre-assembled with perfectly matched gRNAs. Overall features for wild-type Cas9 resembled those for HiFi Cas9, but specific differences were also observed. Mutational analysis of mononucleotide features confirmed their relevance to cleavage efficiencies. Moreover, the mononucleotide feature-based score, CRISPR-kp, correlated well with efficiencies of gRNAs reported in previous zebrafish RNP injection experiments, as well as independently tested crRNAs only in RNP format, but not with Cas9 mRNA co-injection. These findings will facilitate design of gRNA/crRNAs in genome editing applications, especially when using pre-assembled RNPs.