Livestock Gene Editing by One-step Embryo Manipulation

Abstract

The breakthrough and rapid advance of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9) technology has enabled the efficient generation of gene-edited animals by one-step embryo manipulation. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat/CRISPR-associated protein 9 delivery to the livestock embryos has been typically achieved by intracytoplasmic microinjection; however, recent studies show that electroporation may be a reliable, efficient, and practical method for CRISPR/Cas9 delivery. The source of embryos used to generate gene-edited animals varies from in vivo to in vitro produced, depending mostly on the species of interest. In addition, different Cas9 and gRNA reagents can be used for embryo editing, ranging from Cas9-coding plasmid or messenger RNA to Cas9 recombinant protein, which can be combined with in vitro transcribed or synthetic guide RNAs. Mosaicism is reported as one of the main problems with generation of animals by embryo editing. On the other hand, off-target mutations are rarely found in livestock derived from one-step editing. In this review, we discussed these and other aspects of generating gene-edited animals by single-step embryo manipulation.

Keywords: Animal model; CRISPR/Cas9; Embryo; Gene editing; Livestock.