Application of CRISPR/Cas9 for Rapid Genome Editing of Pseudorabies Virus and Bovine Herpesvirus-1

oleh: Wanqi Yu, Jingyi Liu, Yingnan Liu, Maria Forlenza, Hongjun Chen

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2024-02-01

Deskripsi

The CRISPR/Cas9 system is widely used to manipulate viral genomes. Although <i>Alphaherpesvirinae</i> genomes are large and complicated to edit, in recent years several Pseudorabies virus (PRV) mutants have been successfully generated using the CRISPR/Cas9 system. However, the application of CRISPR/Cas9 editing on another member of alpha herpesviruses, bovine herpesvirus-1 (BHV-1), is rarely reported. This paper reports a rapid and straightforward approach to manipulating herpesviruses genome using CRISPR/Cas9. The recombinant plasmids contained the left and right arm of the <i>thymidine kinase</i> (<i>TK</i>) gene of PRV or of the <i>glycoprotein I</i> (<i>gI</i>) and <i>glycoprotein E</i> (<i>gE</i>) of BHV-1. Upon the cleavage of the TK or gIgE gene by Cas9 protein, this was replaced by the <i>enhanced green fluorescence protein</i> (<i>eGFP</i>) by homologous recombination. With this approach, we generated recombinant TK-/eGFP+ PRV and gIgE-/eGFP+ BHV-1 mutants and then proceeded to characterize their biological activities in vitro and in vivo. In conclusion, we showed that alpha herpesvirus, including PRV and BHV-1, can be rapidly edited using the CRISPR/Cas9 approach paving the way to the development of animal herpesvirus vaccines.