Unraveling the functional role of DNA demethylation at specific promoters by targeted steric blockage of DNA methyltransferase with CRISPR/dCas9

Abstract

The causal relationship between DNA demethylation and gene expression regulation has not yet been fully resolved. Here the authors develop a nuclease-dead Cas9 (dCas9) and gRNA site-specific targeting approach to physically block DNA methylation at specific promoters to cause DNA demethylation in cells and tackle this question.