An enhanced CRISPR repressor for targeted mammalian gene regulation

The RNA-guided endonuclease Cas9 can be converted into a programmable transcriptional repressor, but inefficiencies in target-gene silencing have limited its utility. Here we describe an improved Cas9 repressor based on the C-terminal fusion of a rationally designed bipartite repressor domain, KRAB–MeCP2, to nuclease-dead Cas9. We demonstrate the system’s superiority in silencing coding and noncoding genes, simultaneously repressing a series of target genes, improving the results of single and dual guide RNA library screens, and enabling new architectures of synthetic genetic circuits. The fusion of dead Cas9 with KRAB and the transcriptional repressor domain of the chromatin modifier MeCP2 leads to an efficient transcriptional silencer that can be applied to genome-scale screens and genetic circuits.