Genome editing with RNA-guided Cas9 nuclease in Zebrafish embryos

Recent advances with the type II clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) system promise an improved approach to genome editing. However, the applicability and efficiency of this system in model organisms, such as zebrafish, are little studied. Here, we report that RNA-guided Cas9 nuclease efficiently facilitates genome editing in both mammalian cells and zebrafish embryos in a simple and robust manner. Over 35% of site-specific somatic mutations were found when specific Cas/gRNA was used to target either etsrp, gata4 or gata5 in zebrafish embryos in vivo. The Cas9/gRNA efficiently induced biallelic conversion of etsrp or gata5 in the resulting somatic cells, recapitulating their…

• NN
  National Natural Science Foundation of China

  Awards: 81030040, 31271549, 31221002, 30600142
• ZU
  Zhejiang University
• NK
  National Key Research and Development Program of China

  Awards: 2011CB809106, 2012CB944501, 2010CB529503