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A streamlined base editor engineering strategy to reduce bystander editing

delete2025-08-30
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OA
AI
I
Izabella Valdez
I
Ian O’Connor
D
Divesh Patel
K
Katherine Gierer
J
Jan Harrington
E
Ethan Ellis
S
Stephen A. Caponetti
R
Robert Sebra
H
H. Valley
K
K. Coote
M
Martin Mense
S
Samuele G. Marro
T
Tingting Jiang *
DOI:10.1038/s41467-025-63609-6delete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
Base editing (BE) can permanently correct over half of known human pathogenic genetic variants without requiring a repair template, thus serving as a promising therapeutic tool to treat a broad spectrum of genetic diseases. However, the broad activity windows of current base editors pose a major challenge to their therapeutic application. Here, we show that integrating a naturally occurring oligonucleotide binding module into the deaminase active center of TadA-8e, a highly active deoxyadenosine deaminase, enhances its editing specificity. When conjugated with a Cas9 nickase or alternative PAM Cas9 variants, the engineered TadA variant—TadA-NW1—consistently achieves robust A-to-G editing efficiencies within an editing window consisting of four nucleotides, substantially narrower than the 10-bp editing window of the TadA-8e-derived ABEs. Moreover, compared to ABE8e, ABE-NW1 shows significantly decreased Cas9-dependent and -independent off-target activity while maintaining similar on-target editing efficiency. Further, TadA-NW1 can be reprogrammed to perform desired cytidine deamination and adenine transversion within a restricted editing window. Finally, in a cystic fibrosis (CF) cell model, ABE-NW1 outperforms existing ABEs in accurately and efficiently correcting the CFTR W1282X variant, one of the most common CF-causing mutations. In all, we engineered a suite of base editors with refined activity windows, enabling more precise base editing. Importantly, this study presents a streamlined genome editor re-engineering strategy to accelerate the development of therapeutic base editing. The broad activity windows of current base editors pose a major challenge to their therapeutic application. Here, the authors established a generalizable re-engineering framework to narrow the activity windows of diverse base editors, streamlining the development of therapeutic base editing.
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Journal

Nature Communications cover
Nature Communications
IF:
15.7
Papers:
9.3W
Citations:
91.2W

Organization

C
cfft lab
Scholars:
8
Papers: 2
Citations: 0
D
Department of Genetics and Genomic Sciences
Scholars:
64
Papers: 22
Citations: 0
D
department of immunology and immunotherapy
Scholars:
21
Papers: 7
Citations: 1
I
icahn genomics institute
Scholars:
2
Papers: 2
Citations: 0
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