A CRISPR-Cas9 assisted non-homologous end-joining strategy for one-step engineering of bacterial genome

Abstract

Homologous recombination-mediated genome engineering has been broadly applied in prokaryotes with high efficiency and accuracy. However, this method is limited in realizing larger-scale genome editing with numerous genes or large DNA fragments because of the relatively complicated procedure for DNA editing template construction. Here, we describe a CRISPR-Cas9 assisted non-homologous end-joining (CA-NHEJ) strategy for the rapid and efficient inactivation of bacterial gene (s) in a homologous recombination-independent manner and without the use of selective marker. Our study show that CA-NHEJ can be used to delete large chromosomal DNA fragments in a single step that does not require homologous DNA template. It is thus a novel and powerful tool for bacterial genomes reducing and possesses the potential for accelerating the genome evolution.