CRISPR RNA-guided endonucleases (RGENs) have rapidly emerged as a facile and efficient platform for genome editing. Here, we use a human cell-based reporter assay to characterize off-target cleavage of Cas9-based RGENs. We find that single and double mismatches are tolerated to varying degrees depending on their position along the guide RNA (gRNA)-DNA interface. We readily detected off-target alterations induced by four out of six RGENs targeted to endogenous loci in human cells by examination of partially mismatched sites. The off-target sites we identified harbor up to five mismatches and many are mutagenized with frequencies comparable to (or higher than) those observed at the intended on-target site. Our work demonstrates that RGENs are highly active even with imperfectly matched RNA-DNA interfaces in human cells, a finding that might confound their use in research and therapeutic applications.

Engineered transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) have shown promise as facile and broadly applicable genome editing tools. However, no publicly available high-throughput method for constructing TALENs has been published and large-scale assessments of the success rate and targeting range of the technology remain lacking. Here we describe the Fast Ligation-based Automatable Solid-phase High-throughput (FLASH) platform, a rapid and cost-effective method we developed to enable large-scale assembly of TALENs. We tested 48 FLASH-assembled TALEN pairs in a human cell-based EGFP reporter system and found that all 48 possessed efficient gene modification activities. We also used FLASH to assemble TALENs for 96 endogenous human genes implicated in cancer and/or epigenetic regulation and found that 84 pairs were able to efficiently introduce targeted alterations. Our results establish the robustness of TALEN technology and demonstrate that FLASH facilitates high-throughput genome editing at a scale not currently possible with engineered zinc-finger nucleases or meganucleases.

Monomeric CRISPR-Cas9 nucleases are widely used for targeted genome editing but can induce unwanted off-target mutations with high frequencies. Here we describe dimeric RNA-guided FokI Nucleases (RFNs) that recognize extended sequences and can edit endogenous genes with high efficiencies in human cells. The cleavage activity of an RFN depends strictly on the binding of two guide RNAs (gRNAs) to DNA with a defined spacing and orientation and therefore show improved specificities relative to wild-type Cas9 monomers. Importantly, direct comparisons show that RFNs guided by a single gRNA generally induce lower levels of unwanted mutations than matched monomeric Cas9 nickases. In addition, we describe a simple method for expressing multiple gRNAs bearing any 5′ end nucleotide, which gives dimeric RFNs a broad targeting range. RFNs combine the ease of RNA-based targeting with the specificity enhancement inherent to dimerization and are likely to be useful in applications that require highly precise genome editing.