[HTML][HTML] PnB Designer: a web application to design prime and base editor guide RNAs for animals and plants

SM Siegner, ME Karasu, MS Schröder, Z Kontarakis… - BMC …, 2021 - Springer
BMC bioinformatics, 2021Springer
Background The rapid expansion of the CRISPR toolbox through tagging effector domains
to either enzymatically inactive Cas9 (dCas9) or Cas9 nickase (nCas9) has led to several
promising new gene editing strategies. Recent additions include CRISPR cytosine or
adenine base editors (CBEs and ABEs) and the CRISPR prime editors (PEs), in which a
deaminase or reverse transcriptase are fused to nCas9, respectively. These tools hold great
promise to model and correct disease-causing mutations in animal and plant models. But so …
Background
The rapid expansion of the CRISPR toolbox through tagging effector domains to either enzymatically inactive Cas9 (dCas9) or Cas9 nickase (nCas9) has led to several promising new gene editing strategies. Recent additions include CRISPR cytosine or adenine base editors (CBEs and ABEs) and the CRISPR prime editors (PEs), in which a deaminase or reverse transcriptase are fused to nCas9, respectively. These tools hold great promise to model and correct disease-causing mutations in animal and plant models. But so far, no widely-available tools exist to automate the design of both BE and PE reagents.
Results
We developed PnB Designer, a web-based application for the design of pegRNAs for PEs and guide RNAs for BEs. PnB Designer makes it easy to design targeting guide RNAs for single or multiple targets on a variant or reference genome from organisms spanning multiple kingdoms. With PnB Designer, we designed pegRNAs to model all known disease causing mutations available in ClinVar. Additionally, PnB Designer can be used to design guide RNAs to install or revert a SNV, scanning the genome with one CBE and seven different ABE PAM variants and returning the best BE to use. PnB Designer is publicly accessible at http://fgcz-shiny.uzh.ch/PnBDesigner/
Conclusion
With PnB Designer we created a user-friendly design tool for CRISPR PE and BE reagents, which should simplify choosing editing strategy and avoiding design complications.
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