Improving the Precision of Base Editing by Bubble Hairpin Single Guide RNA

Base editing is a powerful genome editing approach that enables single-nucleotide changes without double-stranded DNA breaks (DSBs). However, off-target effects as well as other undesired editings at on-target sites remain obstacles for its application. Here, we report that bubble hairpin single guide RNAs (BH-sgRNAs), which contain a hairpin structure with a bubble region on the 5' end of the guide sequence, can be efficiently applied to both cytosine base editor (CBE) and adenine base editor (ABE) and significantly decrease off-target editing without sacrificing on-target editing efficiency. Meanwhile, such a design also improves the purity of C-to-T conversions induced by base editor 3 (BE3) at on-target sites. Our results present a distinctive and effective strategy to improve the specificity of base editing.IMPORTANCE Base editors are DSB-free genome editing tools and have been widely used in diverse living systems. However, it is reported that these tools can cause substantial off-target editings. To meet this challenge, we developed a new approach to improve the specificity of base editors by using hairpin sgRNAs with a bubble. Furthermore, our sgRNA design also dramatically reduced indels and unwanted base substitutions at on-target sites. We believe that the BH-sgRNA design is a significant improvement over existing sgRNAs of base editors, and our design promises to be adaptable to various base editors. We expect that it will make contributions to improving the safety of gene therapy.