Features of CRISPR-Cas Regulation Key to Highly Efficient and Temporally-Specific crRNA Production

Features of CRISPR-Cas Regulation Key to Highly Efficient and Temporally-Specific crRNA Production

Blog Article

Bacterial immune systems, such as CRISPR-Cas or restriction-modification (R-M) systems, affect bacterial pathogenicity and antibiotic resistance by modulating horizontal gene flow.A model system for CRISPR-Cas regulation, the Type I-E system from Escherichia coli, is silent under standard laboratory conditions and experimentally observing the dynamics of CRISPR-Cas activation is challenging.Two characteristic features of CRISPR-Cas regulation in E.coli are cooperative transcription repression of cas look trail fusion pedals gene and CRISPR array promoters, and fast non-specific degradation of full length CRISPR transcripts (pre-crRNA).

In this work, we use computational modeling to understand how these features affect the system expression dynamics.Signaling which leads to CRISPR-Cas activation is currently unknown, so to bypass this step, we here propose a conceptual setup for cas expression activation, where cas genes are put under transcription control typical for a restriction-modification (R-M) system and then introduced into a cell.Known transcription regulation of an R-M system is used as a proxy for currently unknown CRISPR-Cas transcription control, as both systems are characterized by high cooperativity, which is likely related to similar dynamical constraints of their function.We find that the two characteristic CRISPR-Cas control features are responsible for its temporally-specific dynamical response, so that the system makes a steep (switch-like) transition from OFF to ON state with a time-delay controlled by pre-crRNA degradation rate.

We furthermore find that cooperative transcription regulation qualitatively leads to a cross-over to a regime where, at higher pre-crRNA processing rates, crRNA generation approaches the limit of an infinitely abrupt system induction.We propose that these dynamical properties are associated with rapid expression of CRISPR-Cas components and efficient protection of bacterial cells against foreign DNA.In terms of synthetic applications, the setup proposed here should allow highly ct104277 efficient expression of small RNAs in a narrow time interval, with a specified time-delay with respect to the signal onset.