Alteration of sheep coat color pattern by disruption of ASIP gene via CRISPR Cas9.

Coat color is an important characteristic and economic trait in domestic sheep. Aiming at alteration of Chinese merino sheep coat color by genome manipulation, we disrupted sheep agouti signaling protein gene by CRISPR/Cas9. A total of seven indels were identified in 5 of 6 born lambs. Each targeted lamb happened at least two kinds of modifications, and targeted lambs with multiple modifications displayed variety of coat color patterns. Three lambs with 4 bp deletion showed badgerface with black body coat color in two lambs, and brown coat color with light ventral pigmentation in another one. The black-white spotted color was observed in two lambs with 2 bp deletion. Further analysis unraveled that modifications happened in one or more than two copies of ASIP gene, and moreover, the additional spontaneous mutations of D and/or D preceding the targeting modification could also involve the formation of coat color patterns. Taken together, the entanglement of ASIP modifications by CRISPR/Cas9, spontaneous D/D mutations, and ASIP gene duplications contributed to the variety of coat color patterns in targeted lambs.