Development of a CRISPR-Cas9 Based Luciferase Turn-On System as Nonhomologous End Joining Pathway Reporter

Abstract

There is a need of a non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) pathway reporter system that facilitates screening and discovery of NHEJ chemical inhibitors. In this study, we developed a CRISPR-Cas9 based luciferase turn-on system as a NHEJ pathway reporter. By substituting nucleotide 205C with ATC, we introduced a reading-frame shift and a pre-stop codon into the luciferase coding region and thereby generated a bioluminescent signal mute HEK293T reporter cell line. Then, a CRISPR-Cas9 plasmid expressing a guide RNA targeting luciferase coding region was introduced into the reporter cell line to generate NHEJ-associated indel to restore the reading frame and subsequently turn on the bioluminescent signal. We observed over three-thousand fold increase in signal after CRISPR-Cas9 vector transfection. Different known chemical inhibitors of the NHEJ pathway, such as NU7441, KU0060648, and KU55933, could significantly inhibit the bioluminescent signal generated by CRISPR-Cas9 targeting. In addition, we validated our system by high throughput sequencing.

Keywords: CRISPR-Cas9; DNA damage; inhibitors; luciferase; non-homologous end joining (NHEJ).