Rapid and precise genome engineering in a naturally short-lived vertebrate

Abstract

The African turquoise killifish is a powerful vertebrate system to study complex phenotypes at scale, including aging and age-related disease. Here, we develop a rapid and precise CRISPR/Cas9-mediated knock-in approach in the killifish. We show its efficient application to precisely insert fluorescent reporters of different sizes at various genomic loci in order to drive cell-type- and tissue-specific expression. This knock-in method should allow the establishment of humanized disease models and the development of cell-type-specific molecular probes for studying complex vertebrate biology.

Keywords

• Nothobranchius furzeri
• African killifish
• aging
• CRISPR/Cas9-mediated knock-in
• genetics
• genome engineering