The Disruption of the HIV-1 Gag Start Codon via Editing Using MmCas12m-Dual Base Editor-Loaded Virus-like Particles

Approaches to delivering gene editing tools in the form of ribonucleoproteins may provide a safety advantage over the delivery of nucleic acids encoding ribonucleoproteins. Virus-based vectors are widely used as a delivery platform. However, the persistence of viral exogenous nucleic acids can cause increased genotoxicity. Virus-like particles (VLPs) do not contain an expression cassette and can act as a platform for the delivery of ready-made ribonucleoprotein complexes. The absence of nucleic acids in VLPs eliminates the risk of insertional mutagenesis compared to widely used lentiviruses or adeno-associated viruses. Therefore, we used VLPs to deliver the ribonucleoprotein complex MmCas12m-TadDE to disrupt the HIV-1 gag gene start codon. We detected VLP morphogenesis using electron microscopy. We confirmed the incorporation of MmCas12m-TadDE into VLPs. We achieved an editing efficiency of about 9% in some cases with minimal off-target effects, which confirms the prospect of using VLPs as a platform for delivering genomic editing tools.