LAUSR

Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) offer powerful platforms for studying mechanisms of human diseases and for evaluating potential treatments. Genome editing, particularly the CRISPR/Cas9-based method, is highly effective for generating cell and animal models to study genetic human diseases. However, the procedure for generating gene-edited hPSCs is laborious, time consuming and unintentional genetic changes may confound the consequent experiments and conclusions. Here we describe one-step knockin of the NanoLuc luciferase gene (Nluc) to the fragile X syndrome gene, FMR1, in a human embryonic stem cell line (hESC), H1, and a fragile X disease model human induced pluripotent stem cell line (hiPSC), FX-iPSC. The luciferase reporter cell lines provide new platforms for exploring potential treatments for fragile X syndrome. The shortened and scarless targeting method described here can be effectively applied to other genes.