Prime editor-mediated correction of a pathogenic mutation in purebred dogs

Abstract

Canine hip dysplasia (HD) is a multifactorial disease caused by interactions between genetic and environmental factors. HD, which mainly occurs in medium- to large-sized dogs, is a disease that causes severe pain and requires surgical intervention. However, the procedure is not straight-forward, and the only way to ameliorate the situation is to exclude individual dogs with HD from breeding programs. Recently, prime editing (PE), a novel genome editing tool based on the CRISPR-Cas9 system, has been developed and validated in plants and mice. In this study, we successfully corrected a mutation related to HD in Labrador retriever dogs for the first time. We collected cells from a dog diagnosed with HD, corrected the mutation using PE, and generated mutation-corrected dogs by somatic cell nuclear transfer. The results indicate that PE technology can potentially be used as a platform to correct genetic defects in dogs.