Establishment of CRISPR/Cas9-Mediated Knock-in System for Porcine Cells with High Efficiency

Since the birth of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/Cas9, the new genome engineering technology has become a hot topic in the scientific community. However, for swine, the system of pig cells’ homology directed repair (HDR) is generally unstable and costly. Here, we aim to make knock-in of porcine cells more realizable. The Rosa26 locus was chosen for gene editing. Through the optimization of strategy, an efficient sgRNA was selected by TIDE analysis. Correspondingly, a vector system was constructed for gene insertion in pRosa26 locus by homologous recombination. A large percentage of cells whose gene is edited easily result in apoptosis. To improve the positive rate, culturing systems have been optimized. Sequence alignment and nuclear transfer confirmed that we got two knock-in cell lines and transgene primary porcine fetal fibroblasts (PFFs) successfully. Results showed that the gene editing platform we used can obtain genetically modified pig cells stably and efficiently. This system can contribute to pig gene research and production of transgenic pigs.