In Vivo Modeling of Skeletal Muscle Diseases Using the CRISPR/Cas9 System in Rats

The CRISPR/Cas9 system is a powerful gene editing tool that can be used to modify a target gene in almost all species. It unlocks the possibility of generating knockout or knock-in genes in laboratory animals other than mice. The Dystrophin gene is implicated in human Duchenne muscular dystrophy; however, Dystrophin gene mutant mice do not show severe muscle degenerating phenotypes when compared to humans. On the other hand, Dystrophin gene mutant rats made with the CRISPR/Cas9 system show more severe phenotypes than those seen in mice. The phenotypes seen in dystrophin mutant rats are more representative of the features of human DMD. This implies that rats are better models of human skeletal muscle diseases than mice. In this chapter, we present a detailed protocol for the generation of gene-modified rats by microinjection into embryos using the CRISPR/Cas9 system.