93 A sheep model of sickle cell disease using CRISPR/Cas9 and somatic cell nuclear transfer

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is the most common inherited hemoglobinopathy, with more than 2 million people in the United States alone carrying the sickle gene. Approximately 100 000 of these people are homozygous and suffer from SCD. Worldwide, there are ∼4.4 million people with SCD. SCD is caused by a single A to T nucleotide replacement at the sixth codon of the β-globin gene, which results in the substitution of a valine for glutamate in the β-globin protein. This causes the resultant tetrameric haemoglobin molecule to be unstable and the red cells carrying this aberrant protein to “sickle,” decreasing the ability of these cells to carry oxygen. Sheep and humans exhibit a high degree of homology at the level of the genome. In addition, their anatomy, organ physiology, and immune system development closely parallel that of humans during fetal life. The ovine β-globin (HBB) gene shares 87.5% similarity with human HBB. Therefore, we hypothesised that the introduction of the “sickle” mutation in the sheep genome would lead to the SCD phenotype in sheep that could provide a valuable platform for evaluating prenatal and postnatal drug and gene therapies for this disease. In this study, we used a CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing approach to introduce the SCD mutation into the sheep β-globin/HBB gene. We designed a single guide (sg)RNA targeting exon 1 of the sheep β-globin/HBB gene using the Benchling software (https://benchling.com/academic). The sgRNA was synthesised by Synthego and Cas9 purchased from IDT. Using the Lonza-4D-Nucleofector system, the Cas9/sgRNA ribonucleoprotein complex was transfected into sheep fetal fibroblasts (SFFs) along with 101-bp single-stranded oligodeoxynucleotides, flanking the sickle cell mutation to enable homology-directed repair. The transfected SFFs were then cultured in Dulbecco’s modified Eagle medium, supplemented with 15% fetal bovine serum and 1% penicillin, and incubated at 38.5°C. After 2 days, DNA was extracted from one-third of the SFFs and the remainder were seeded individually into five 96-well plates by limited dilution. After 7 days of culture, individual colonies were expanded into 24-well plates and cultured for an additional 3 days. PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis using Image J software demonstrated a high rate of mutations (∼70%) by either indels or SCD mutation that led to the loss of the restriction enzyme site, which was further supported by the analysis of cell colonies. We isolated 59 single cell-derived SFF colonies and, based on PCR/RLFP assay, 31/59 (52%) of them contained biallelic mutations (either indels or point mutations) and were subsequently submitted for Sanger sequencing. The sequencing demonstrated that 3 colonies (9.6%) contained biallelic SCD mutations in the β-globin/HBB gene. These data demonstrate that we successfully introduced the SCD mutation into SFFs. These cells will be used in the production of the first large animal (sheep) SCD model by somatic cell nuclear transfer in fall of 2020. This research was supported by UAES project 1343 and by USDA/NIFA multistate research project W-4171.