title: Conditional knockouts generated by engineered CRISPR-Cas9 endonuclease reveal the roles of coronin in C. elegans neural development.
abstract: Conditional gene knockout animals are valuable tools for studying the mechanisms underlying cell and developmental biology. We developed a conditional knockout strategy by spatiotemporally manipulating the expression of an RNA-guided DNA endonuclease, CRISPR-Cas9, in Caenorhabditis elegans somatic cell lineages. We showed that this somatic CRISPR-Cas9 technology provides a quick and efficient approach to generate conditional knockouts in various cell types at different developmental stages. Furthermore, we demonstrated that this method outperforms our recently developed somatic TALEN technique and enables the one-step generation of multiple conditional knockouts. By combining these techniques with live-cell imaging, we showed that an essential embryonic gene, Coronin, which is associated with human neurobehavioral dysfunction, regulates actin organization and cell morphology during C. elegans postembryonic neuroblast migration and neuritogenesis. We propose that the somatic CRISPR-Cas9 platform is uniquely suited for conditional gene editing-based biomedical research.
authors.affiliation: Tsinghua-Peking Center for Life Sciences, School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: Zhongfu
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Shen
authors.affiliation: Tsinghua-Peking Center for Life Sciences, School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: Xianliang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Tsinghua-Peking Center for Life Sciences, School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: Yongping
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chai
authors.affiliation: Tsinghua-Peking Center for Life Sciences, School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: Zhiwen
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: Tsinghua-Peking Center for Life Sciences, School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: Peishan
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Yi
authors.affiliation: Tsinghua-Peking Center for Life Sciences, School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: Guoxin
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Feng
authors.affiliation: School of Medicine, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Tsinghua-Peking Center for Life Sciences, School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. Electronic address: guangshuo.ou@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Guangshuo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Ou
mesh_terms: D000199:Actins / Q000737:chemistry; D000818:Animals; D017173:Caenorhabditis elegans / Q000196:embryology*; D019070:Cell Lineage; D002465:Cell Movement; D064112:Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats / Q000235:genetics*; D003599:Cytoskeleton / Q000378:metabolism; D004720:Endonucleases / Q000235:genetics*; D018507:Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental; D055786:Gene Knockout Techniques; D005818:Genetic Engineering; D006360:Heat-Shock Proteins; D008840:Microfilament Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D008938:Mitosis; D009154:Mutation; D055495:Neurogenesis / Q000502:physiology*; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D000199:Actins; D006360:Heat-Shock Proteins; D008840:Microfilament Proteins; C072061:coronin proteins; D004720:Endonucleases