CRISPR deletion of MIEN1 in breast cancer cells

Migration and Invasion Enhancer (MIEN1) is an oncogene which is involved in facilitating motility of cancer cells through actin dynamics and gene expression. Increased MIEN1 expression in many types of tumors leads to disease progression and metastatic propensity. It is unclear precisely how MIEN1 is involved in this process and more studies are required to tease out the mechanisms. Here we show that Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat (CRISPR) genome editing effectively produced specific genomic deletions in the MIEN1 gene which led to the abrogation of its expression in breast cancer cells. The single guide RNAs (sgRNAs) mediated targeting of MIEN1 was specific and none of the clones screened for off-target cleavage revealed any insertions or deletions (indels). Additionally, disruption of the MIEN1 gene did not alter the cell morphology, growth, proliferation or survival. Knocking out MIEN1 in these breast cancer cells will allow future studies to determine the exact role MIEN1 plays in breast tumor metastasis, which might lead to production of novel therapeutics to treat this and other cancers.