LAUSR

Current DNA base editors contain nuclease and DNA deaminase that enables deamination of cytosine (C) or adenine (A), but no method for guanine (G) or thymine (T) editing is available now. Here we developed a deaminase-free glycosylase-based guanine base editor (gGBE) with G editing ability, by fusing Cas9 nickase with engineered N-methylpurine DNA glycosylase protein (MPG). By several rounds of MPG mutagenesis via unbiased and rational screening using an intron-split EGFP reporter, we demonstrated that gGBE with engineered MPG could increase G editing efficiency by more than 1,500 folds. Furthermore, this gGBE exhibited high base editing efficiency (up to 81.2%) and high G-to-T or G-to-C (i.e., G-to-Y) conversion ratio (up to 0.95) in both cultured human cells and mouse embryos. Thus, we have provided a proof-of-concept of a new base-editing approach by endowing the engineered DNA glycosylase the capability to selectively excising a new type of substrate.