Human pluripotent stem cells hold tremendous potential for both basic biology and cell-based therapies for a wide variety of diseases. The ability to manipulate the genome of these cells using the CRISPR/Cas9 technology has expanded this potential by providing a valuable tool to engineer or correct disease-associated mutations. Because of the high efficiency with which CRISPR/Cas9 creates targeted double-strand breaks, a major challenge has been the introduction of precise genetic modifications on one allele without indel formation on the non-targeted allele. To overcome this obstacle, we describe use of two oligonucleotide repair templates: one expressing the sequence change and the other maintaining the normal sequence. In addition, we have streamlined both the transfection and screening methodologies to make the protocols efficient, with small numbers of cells and a limited amount of labor-intensive clone passaging. This article provides a technically simple approach for generating valuable tools to model human disease in stem cells. © 2022 Wiley Periodicals LLC. Basic Protocol 1: Application and optimization of CRISPR-based genome editing in human pluripotent stem cells Basic Protocol 2: Genetic modification of human pluripotent stem cells using a double-oligonucleotide CRISPR/Cas9 recombination system.
Keywords: CRISPR/Cas9; genome editing; heterozygous editing; homology-directed repair; human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs); transfection.
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