Wang Yaling, Chen Jingwen, Huang Xueying, Wu Bangguo, Dai Peng, Zhang Feng, Li Jinsong, Wang Lingbo
State Key Laboratory of Genetic Engineering, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Metabolic Remodeling and Health, Institute of Metabolism and Integrative Biology, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200438, China.
Institute of Reproduction and Development, Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200011, China.
Sci China Life Sci. 2024 May;67(5):1035-1050. doi: 10.1007/s11427-023-2408-2. Epub 2024 Feb 7.
Cytosine base editing achieves C•G-to-T•A substitutions and can convert four codons (CAA/CAG/CGA/TGG) into STOP-codons (induction of STOP-codons, iSTOP) to knock out genes with reduced mosaicism. iSTOP enables direct phenotyping in founders' somatic cells, but it remains unknown whether this works in founders' germ cells so as to rapidly reveal novel genes for fertility. Here, we initially establish that iSTOP in mouse zygotes enables functional characterization of known genes in founders' germ cells: Cfap43-iSTOP male founders manifest expected sperm features resembling human "multiple morphological abnormalities of the flagella" syndrome (i.e., MMAF-like features), while oocytes of Zp3-iSTOP female founders have no zona pellucida. We further illustrate iSTOP's utility for dissecting the functions of unknown genes with Ccdc183, observing MMAF-like features and male infertility in Ccdc183-iSTOP founders, phenotypes concordant with those of Ccdc183-KO offspring. We ultimately establish that CCDC183 is essential for sperm morphogenesis through regulating the assembly of outer dynein arms and participating in the intra-flagellar transport. Our study demonstrates iSTOP as an efficient tool for direct reproductive disease modeling and phenotyping in germ cells of the founder generation, and rapidly reveals the essentiality of Ccdc183 in fertility, thus providing a time-saving approach for validating genetic defects (like nonsense mutations) for human infertility.
胞嘧啶碱基编辑可实现C•G到T•A的替换,并能将四个密码子(CAA/CAG/CGA/TGG)转换为终止密码子(诱导终止密码子,即iSTOP),以减少嵌合现象来敲除基因。iSTOP能够在亲代的体细胞中进行直接表型分析,但尚不清楚其在亲代生殖细胞中是否起作用,从而快速揭示与生育相关的新基因。在此,我们首先证实,小鼠受精卵中的iSTOP能够对亲代生殖细胞中的已知基因进行功能表征:Cfap43-iSTOP雄性亲代表现出预期的精子特征,类似于人类的“鞭毛多重形态异常”综合征(即类MMAF特征),而Zp3-iSTOP雌性亲代的卵母细胞没有透明带。我们进一步通过Ccdc183阐述了iSTOP在剖析未知基因功能方面的效用,观察到Ccdc183-iSTOP亲代出现类MMAF特征和雄性不育,这些表型与Ccdc183基因敲除后代的表型一致。我们最终证实,CCDC183通过调节外动力蛋白臂的组装并参与鞭毛内运输,对精子形态发生至关重要。我们的研究表明,iSTOP是一种有效的工具,可用于在亲代生殖细胞中直接进行生殖疾病建模和表型分析,并快速揭示Ccdc183在生育中的重要性,从而为验证人类不育的遗传缺陷(如无义突变)提供了一种节省时间的方法。