De novo identification of essential protein domains from CRISPR-Cas9 tiling-sgRNA knockout screens

Nat Commun. 2019 Oct 4;10(1):4541. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-12489-8.

Abstract

High-throughput CRISPR-Cas9 knockout screens using a tiling-sgRNA design permit in situ evaluation of protein domain function. Here, to facilitate de novo identification of essential protein domains from such screens, we propose ProTiler, a computational method for the robust mapping of CRISPR knockout hyper-sensitive (CKHS) regions, which refer to the protein regions associated with a strong sgRNA dropout effect in the screens. Applied to a published CRISPR tiling screen dataset, ProTiler identifies 175 CKHS regions in 83 proteins. Of these CKHS regions, more than 80% overlap with annotated Pfam domains, including all of the 15 known drug targets in the dataset. ProTiler also reveals unannotated essential domains, including the N-terminus of the SWI/SNF subunit SMARCB1, which is validated experimentally. Surprisingly, the CKHS regions are negatively correlated with phosphorylation and acetylation sites, suggesting that protein domains and post-translational modification sites have distinct sensitivities to CRISPR-Cas9 mediated amino acids loss.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • CRISPR-Cas Systems / genetics
  • Cell Line, Tumor
  • Computational Biology / methods*
  • Datasets as Topic
  • Gene Knockout Techniques
  • High-Throughput Screening Assays
  • Humans
  • Models, Genetic
  • Protein Domains / genetics*
  • Protein Processing, Post-Translational / genetics
  • RNA, Guide, CRISPR-Cas Systems / genetics
  • SMARCB1 Protein / genetics
  • Software

Substances

  • RNA, Guide, CRISPR-Cas Systems
  • SMARCB1 Protein
  • SMARCB1 protein, human