Rapid Evaluation of CRISPR Guides and Donors for Engineering Mice

Although the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)/ CRISPR associated protein 9 (Cas9) technique has dramatically lowered the cost and increased the speed of generating genetically engineered mice, success depends on using guide RNAs and donor DNAs which direct efficient knock-out (KO) or knock-in (KI). By Sanger sequencing DNA from blastocysts previously injected with the same CRISPR components intended to produce the engineered mice, one can test the effectiveness of different guide RNAs and donor DNAs. We describe in detail here a simple, rapid (three days), inexpensive protocol, for amplifying DNA from blastocysts to determine the results of CRISPR point mutation KIs. Using it, we show that (1) the rate of KI seen in blastocysts is similar to that seen in mice for a given guide RNA/donor DNA pair, (2) a donor complementary to the variable portion of a guide integrated in a more all-or-none fashion, (3) donor DNAs can be used simultaneously to integrate two different mutations into the same locus, and (4) by placing silent mutations about every 6 to 10 bp between the Cas9 cut site and the desired mutation(s), the desired mutation(s) can be incorporated into genomic DNA over 30 bp away from the cut at the same high efficiency as close to the cut.