Adeno-Associated Virus-Mediated Delivery of CRISPR for Cardiac Gene Editing in Mice

The clustered, regularly interspaced, short, palindromic repeat (CRISPR) system has greatly facilitated genome engineering in both cultured cells and living organisms from a wide variety of species. The CRISPR technology has also been explored as novel therapeutics for a number of human diseases. Proof-of-concept data are highly encouraging as exemplified by recent studies that demonstrate the feasibility and efficacy of gene editing-based therapeutic approach for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) using a murine model. In particular, intravenous and intraperitoneal injection of the recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) serotype rh.74 (rAAVrh.74) has enabled efficient cardiac delivery of the Staphylococcus aureus CRISPR-associated protein 9 (SaCas9) and two guide RNAs (gRNA) to delete a genomic region with a mutant codon in exon 23 of mouse Dmd gene. This same approach can also be used to knock out the gene-of-interest and study their cardiac function in postnatal mice when the gRNA is designed to target the coding region of the gene. In this protocol, we show in detail how to engineer rAAVrh.74-CRISPR vector and how to achieve highly efficient cardiac delivery in neonatal mice.