New tool significantly increases HDR rates by providing optimized donor template design and simplified Cas9 guide RNA selection
CORALVILLE, Iowa–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT), a leading comprehensive genomics solutions provider, has launched the Alt-R™ HDR Design Tool and Templates, an intelligent and easy-to-use design tool that significantly increases homology-directed repair (HDR) rates by simplifying guide RNA selection and providing optimized donor templates.
The new tool tackles the challenges of low HDR rates commonly faced by CRISPR researchers. In addition to selecting the best guide RNA, HDR experiments require design of a custom template DNA that will introduce the desired sequence changes into the target location. This intelligent tool simplifies selection of the guide RNA and design of the donor DNA template, providing researchers an effective solution for genome editing with high precision. To further boost efficiency of the HDR process, IDT developed a set of chemical modifications that increase the performance of the DNA template. The combined use of the optimized template design, optimized chemical modification, and IDT’s proprietary HDR Enhancer additive can increase the rate of HDR several-fold.
Mark Behlke, MD, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer at IDT said, “Destroying gene function using CRISPR genome editing techniques has been routine for several years now, with little additional optimization needed. Building new gene function using HDR, however, has been more problematic. The new tools introduced by IDT make HDR more efficient and more likely to succeed and represent a much needed advance for the field.”
The HDR Design Tool was developed using clear design principles based on extensive wet bench testing and customer validation. The new tool provides exceptional flexibility for input format and supports multiple species. It is the latest in a series of free tools that IDT has developed for researchers, helping to break down barriers and enable scientists to achieve their research goals.
“The IDT products have really improved our ability to edit human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells at high efficiency in a very precise way,” said Dr. Bill Skarnes, PhD, Professor and Director of Cellular Engineering at The Jackson Laboratories (JAX). “We find that both the Cas9 high-fidelity version and the Cas12a Ultra recombinant proteins work extremely well for editing of human iPS cells. Delivering the protein and the template at the same time gives us maximal HDR.”
As scientists themselves, IDT developed the Alt-R HDR Design Tool and Templates with scientists in mind. Utilizing the designed guide RNA and modified donor oligos enables researchers to achieve their desired genome edits more efficiently. Thus, in addition to having confidence in their results, researchers will save time, effort, and money while accomplishing their project goals. Researchers who have their own donor template design can still take advantage of IDT’s proprietary donor template chemical modifications via an ordering tool that was specifically developed to meet their needs.
“Using electroporation, integration rate we observed with IDT’s Alt-R HDR donor oligo was significantly higher than integration rate obtained with the unmodified ssODN donor in mouse early embryos,” said Professor Izuho Hatada, Genome Science Institute for Molecular and Cellular Regulation at Gunma University.
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About IDT
Integrated DNA Technologies, Inc. (IDT) develops, manufactures, and markets nucleic acid products for the life sciences industry in the areas of academic and commercial research, agriculture, medical diagnostics, and pharmaceutical development. IDT has developed proprietary technologies for genomics applications such as next generation sequencing, CRISPR genome editing, synthetic biology, digital PCR, and RNA interference. Through its GMP services, IDT manufactures products used by scientists in researching many forms of cancer and most inherited and infectious diseases. IDT is widely recognized as the industry leader in custom nucleic acid manufacture, serving over 130,000 life sciences researchers. IDT has its manufacturing headquarters in Coralville, Iowa, USA, with additional manufacturing sites in San Diego, California, USA; Leuven, Belgium; and Singapore.
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