A highly specific CRISPR-Cas12j nuclease enables allele-specific genome editing

The CRISPR-Cas system can treat autosomal dominant diseases by nonhomologous end joining (NHEJ) gene disruption of mutant alleles. However, many single-nucleotide mutations cannot be discriminated from wild-type alleles by current CRISPR-Cas systems. Here, we functionally screened six Cas12j nucleases and determined Cas12j-8 as an ideal genome editor with a hypercompact size. Cas12j-8 displayed comparable activity to AsCas12a and Un1Cas12f1. Cas12j-8 is a highly specific nuclease sensitive to single-nucleotide mismatches in the protospacer adjacent motif (PAM)–proximal region. We experimentally proved that Cas12j-8 enabled allele-specific disruption of genes with a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP). Cas12j-8 recognizes a simple TTN PAM that provides for high target site density. In silico analysis reveals that Cas12j-8 enables allele-specific disruption of 25,931 clinically relevant variants in the ClinVar database, and 485,130,147 SNPs in the dbSNP database. Therefore, Cas12j-8 would be particularly suitable for therapeutic applications.