Journal: bioRxiv
Article Title: Optimizing in vitro Transcribed CRISPR-Cas9 Single-Guide RNA Libraries for Improved Uniformity and Affordability
doi: 10.1101/2025.03.24.644170
Figure Lengend Snippet: a. We PCR-amplified microarray-derived 98-nt oligo subpools, each containing spacers corresponding to individual sgRNA libraries. Each oligo was designed with forward and reverse PCR primer sites, a T7 promoter followed by 1-2 guanines, unique 20 nucleotide spacer sequences, and a BsaI type IIs restriction site. Golden Gate Assembly (GGA) was used to add the conserved sgRNA scaffold sequence to the oligos. The resulting GGA products were used as templates for pooled IVT of sgRNA libraries using T7 RNAP. b. To evaluate the initial performance of our sgRNA synthesis workflow, we manually pooled 18 column-synthesized oligos with 18 unique spacer sequences, converting them to dsDNA by extending the reverse primer, followed by GGA and IVT. Successful synthesis of pooled and individual sgRNAs (100 bases) was confirmed by 10% TBE-urea denaturing electrophoresis, followed by SYBR-Gold post-staining. c. Ten sgRNA libraries containing 206 to 2,626 spacers were synthesized from microarray-derived (array) oligos. The percent coverage of the microarray-derived libraries (orange dots) was compared to the percent coverage of the 18-plex sgRNA library (teal dot) with column derived oligos. We find an inverse correlation between coverage and scale (Pearson correlation analysis, r = −0.58). d. Comparison of spacer distribution uniformity between a microarray-derived 206-plex sgRNA library and a library of 72 independently transcribed sgRNAs from New England Biolabs (NEB). Normalized abundance is shown, with spacers ranked in descending order.
Article Snippet: First, components were added in the following order to prepare a 100 µL aqueous phase reaction: 2.5 µL of Murine RNase inhibitor (40,000 units/mL), nuclease-free water, 0.01-9 pmol (1-800 ng) of template DNA, 10 µL of 100 mM dithiothreitol, 10 µL of 10X RNA polymerase reaction buffer, 10 µL of 25 mM ribonucleotide solution mix, 10 µL of T7 RNA polymerase (50,000 units/mL), and 10 µL of 20 mg/mL recombinant albumin (NEB).
Techniques: Amplification, Microarray, Derivative Assay, Sequencing, Synthesized, Electrophoresis, Staining, Comparison