Directed evolution of CRISPR-Cas9 to increase its specificity

The use of CRISPR-Cas9 as a therapeutic reagent is hampered by its off-target effects. Although rationally designed S. pyogenes Cas9 (SpCas9) variants that display higher specificities than the wild-type SpCas9 protein are available, these attenuated Cas9 variants are often poorly efficient in human cells. Here, we develop a directed evolution approach in E. coli to obtain Sniper-Cas9, which shows high specificities without killing on-target...