Genome editing and transcriptional repression in Pseudomonas putida KT2440 via the type II CRISPR system

The soil bacterium Pseudomonas putida KT2440 is a "generally recognized as safe"-certified strain with robust property and versatile metabolism. Thus, it is an ideal candidate for synthetic biology, biodegradation, and other biotechnology applications. The known genome editing approaches of Pseudomonas are suboptimal; thus, it is necessary to develop a high efficiency genome editing tool.

In this study, we established a fast and convenient CRISPR-Cas9 method in P. putida KT2440. Gene deletion, gene insertion and gene replacement could be achieved within 5 days, and the mutation efficiency reached > 70%. Single nucleotide replacement could be realized, overcoming the limitations of protospacer adjacent motif sequences. We also applied nuclease-deficient Cas9 binding at three locations upstream of enhanced green fluorescent protein (eGFP) for transcriptional inhibition, and the expression intensity of eGFP reduced to 28.5, 29.4, and 72.1% of the control level, respectively. Furthermore, based on this CRISPR-Cas9 system, we also constructed a CRISPR-Cpf1 system, which we validated for genome editing in P. putida KT2440.

In this research, we established CRISPR based genome editing and regulation control systems in P. putida KT2440. These fast and efficient approaches will greatly facilitate the application of P. putida KT2440.