Bioengineering Publications

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Browsing Bioengineering Publications by Subject "adeno-associated virus"

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    A Self-Deleting AAV-CRISPR System for In Vivo Genome Editing
    (Elsevier, 2019) Li, Ang; Lee, Ciaran M.; Hurley, Ayrea E.; Jarrett, Kelsey E.; De Giorgi, Marco; Lu, Weiqi; Balderrama, Karol S.; Doerfler, Alexandria M.; Deshmukh, Harshavardhan; Ray, Anirban; Bao, Gang; Lagor, William R.
    Adeno-associated viral (AAV) vectors packaging the CRISPR-Cas9 system (AAV-CRISPR) can efficiently modify disease-relevant genes in somatic tissues with high efficiency. AAV vectors are a preferred delivery vehicle for tissue-directed gene therapy because of their ability to achieve sustained expression from largely non-integrating episomal genomes. However, for genome editizng applications, permanent expression of non-human proteins such as the bacterially derived Cas9 nuclease is undesirable. Methods are needed to achieve efficient genome editing in vivo, with controlled transient expression of CRISPR-Cas9. Here, we report a self-deleting AAV-CRISPR system that introduces insertion and deletion mutations into AAV episomes. We demonstrate that this system dramatically reduces the level of Staphylococcus aureus Cas9 protein, often greater than 79%, while achieving high rates of on-target editing in the liver. Off-target mutagenesis was not observed for the self-deleting Cas9 guide RNA at any of the predicted potential off-target sites examined. This system is efficient and versatile, as demonstrated by robust knockdown of liver-expressed proteins in vivo. This self-deleting AAV-CRISPR system is an important proof of concept that will help enable translation of liver-directed genome editing in humans.
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    SCHEMA Computational Design of Virus Capsid Chimeras: Calibrating How Genome Packaging, Protection, and Transduction Correlate with Calculated Structural Disruption
    (American Chemical Society, 2013) Ho, Michelle L.; Adler, Benjamin A.; Torre, Michael L.; Silberg, Jonathan J.; Suh, Junghae
    Adeno-associated virus (AAV) recombination can result in chimeric capsid protein subunits whose ability to assemble into an oligomeric capsid, package a genome, and transduce cells depends on the inheritance of sequence from different AAV parents. To develop quantitative design principles for guiding site-directed recombination of AAV capsids, we have examined how capsid structural perturbations predicted by the SCHEMA algorithm correlate with experimental measurements of disruption in seventeen chimeric capsid proteins. In our small chimera population, created by recombining AAV serotypes 2 and 4, we found that protection of viral genomes and cellular transduction were inversely related to calculated disruption of the capsid structure. Interestingly, however, we did not observe a correlation between genome packaging and calculated structural disruption; a majority of the chimeric capsid proteins formed at least partially assembled capsids and more than half packaged genomes, including those with the highest SCHEMA disruption. These results suggest that the sequence space accessed by recombination of divergent AAV serotypes is rich in capsid chimeras that assemble into 60-mer capsids and package viral genomes. Overall, the SCHEMA algorithm may be useful for delineating quantitative design principles to guide the creation of libraries enriched in genome-protecting virus nanoparticles that can effectively transduce cells. Such improvements to the virus design process may help advance not only gene therapy applications but also other bionanotechnologies dependent upon the development of viruses with new sequences and functions.
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    Tunable Protease-Activatable Virus Nanonodes
    (American Chemical Society, 2014) Judd, Justin; Ho, Michelle L.; Tiwari, Abhinav; Gomez, Eric J.; Dempsey, Christopher; Vliet, Kim Van; Igoshin, Oleg A.; Silberg, Jonathan J.; Agbandje-McKenna, Mavis; Suh, Junghae
    We explored the unique signal integration properties of the self-assembling 60-mer protein capsid of adeno-associated virus (AAV), a clinically proven human gene therapy vector, by engineering proteolytic regulation of virusﾖreceptor interactions such that processing of the capsid by proteases is required for infection. We find the transfer function of our engineered protease-activatable viruses (PAVs), relating the degree of proteolysis (input) to PAV activity (output), is highly nonlinear, likely due to increased polyvalency. By exploiting this dynamic polyvalency, in combination with the self-assembly properties of the virus capsid, we show that mosaic PAVs can be constructed that operate under a digital AND gate regime, where two different protease inputs are required for virus activation. These results show viruses can be engineered as signal-integrating nanoscale nodes whose functional properties are regulated by multiple proteolytic signals with easily tunable and predictable response surfaces, a promising development toward advanced control of gene delivery.