Targeted DNA methylation of the ALS/FTD gene C9orf72 via endogenous DNA damage repair pathways (II)

DNA methyltransferases (DNMTs) are thought to be involved in the cellular response to DNA damage, thus linking DNA repair mechanisms with DNA methylation. This study presents a novel method of targeted DNA methylation that utilizes endogenous DNA double strand break repair pathways and applies it to the neurodegenerative disease gene C9orf72. A double strand break induced by CRISPR/cas9 in the promoter of C9orf72 is sufficient to induce DNA methylation, and methylation can be precisely targeted through the process of homology directed repair (HDR) via delivery of an in vitro methylated exogenous repair template. Long methylated double stranded DNA templates induce more methylation than shorter templates and with higher efficiency than a dCas9-DNMT3a fusion protein construct. Genome-wide methylation analysis reveals no significant off-target methylation changes when inducing methylation via HDR, whereas the dCas9-DNMT3a fusion construct causes significant off-target methylation at over 67,000 sites. This method is applied to generate a patient derived iPSC model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia (ALS/FTD) that exhibits stable DNA methylation patterns similar to those seen in patients. Using this model, it’s shown for the first time that DNA methylation of the 5’ regulatory region directly reduces C9orf72 expression and increases histone H3K9 tri-methylation levels. Measurement of off-target effects at C9orf72 using the HARDEN method HEK293T cells were transfected with either No gRNA plasmid+Meth template or Cas9+gRNA+Meth template and puromycin selected for 2 days. Cells were collected on day 4 post transfection and bisulfite converted DNA was hybidized to Infinium MethylationEPIC