Abstract
Huntington’s disease (HD) is a hereditary neurological disorder caused by expansion of the CAG repeat tract in the huntingtin gene (HTT). The mutant protein with a long polyglutamine tract is toxic to cells, especially neurons, leading to their progressive degeneration. Similar to many other monogenic diseases, HD is a good target for gene therapy approaches, including the use of programmable endonucleases. Here, we describe a protocol for HTT gene knock out using a modified Cas9 protein (nickase, Cas9n) and a pair of sgRNAs flanking the repeats. Recently, we showed that excision of the CAG repeat tract resulted in a frameshift mutation and premature translation termination. As a model, we used HD patient-derived fibroblasts electroporated with a pair of plasmid vectors expressing CRISPR-Cas9n tools. Efficient HTT inactivation independent of the CAG tract length was confirmed by Western blotting. A modified version of this protocol involving precise excision of the CAG repeats and insertion of a new DNA sequence by homology directed repair may also be used for the generation of new isogenic cellular models of HD.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by a grant from the National Science Center (2015/18/E/NZ2/00678) and from the quality-promoting subsidy under the Leading National Research Center (KNOW) program for 2014–2018.
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Dabrowska, M., Olejniczak, M. (2020). Gene Therapy for Huntington’s Disease Using Targeted Endonucleases. In: Richard, GF. (eds) Trinucleotide Repeats. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2056. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-9784-8_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-9784-8_17
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