The invention of CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing has unlocked a greater understanding of the human genome. Researchers can use this system to make targeted cuts in any gene in the genome, forcing the cell to perform a rapid repair at the cut site. These repairs often introduce mutations into the damaged area, adding or removing DNA letters and disrupting the gene. This allows researchers to study what happens to cells when specific genes are missing, which can help to uncover what each gene is for.

One of the most comprehensive ways to use this technique is to perform a CRISPR-Cas9 screen, which disrupts each gene in the genome one by one. For a CRISPR-Cas9 screen to work well, a cell needs to survive the cuts to its genome. But there is a crucial gene that can stop this happening. Often described as the 'guardian of the genome', this gene codes for a protein called p53, a tumour suppressor that helps to stop a cell turning cancerous when its DNA becomes damaged. This protein activates when the cell senses a cut in its genetic material and can kill the cell if it fails to make a successful repair.

Recent work has shown that the presence of a working copy of the gene for the p53 protein might limit the ability of CRISPR-Cas9 to edit genes. But the evidence was inconclusive. So, Bowden, Morales-Juarez et al. performed two parallel CRISPR-Cas9 screens in human cells with and without p53 to find out more. This revealed that CRISPR-Cas9 can inactivate genes in both normal cells and cells lacking the p53 protein, but that it works better in cells without p53. This was because, when p53 was active, the cells initiated a protective response against the CRISPR-Cas9 cuts. This changed the patterns of genes successfully inactivated by the screen, but it did not make the results unusable. Careful experimental design and thorough data analysis made it possible to get useful results even in cells with functional p53 protein.

The gene for p53 has mutations in around half of human cancers. So, understanding how it affects CRISPR-Cas9 screens could influence the design of future experiments. It is possible that the effects of the p53 protein could vary from cell type to cell type, and with different p53 mutations. Comparisons like the one performed here could help to further unpick how the cell's DNA repair systems might interfere with future CRISPR experiments.

CRISPR-Cas9 genome engineering technologies have transformed cell biology, particularly high throughput functional genomic screens (Wang et al., 2015; Shalem et al., 2014; Shalem et al., 2015; Smith et al., 2017) . Pooled CRISPR-Cas9 cell viability screens have been successfully employed in determining gene essentiality (Hart et al., 2015), identifying genetic interactions (Chan et al., 2019) and assessing drug sensitivities across various genetic backgrounds (Han et al., 2017). A number of factors influence CRISPR-Cas9 screen performance, including cellular background. In particular, recent reports concerning technical difficulties in CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing in p53-proficient cells, have brought into question the suitability of p53-proficient cell lines for high throughput CRISPR-Cas9 genetic screens (Haapaniemi et al., 2018; Ihry et al., 2018).

TP53, encoding p53, acts as a master regulator of cell-cycle checkpoint activation (Kastan et al., 1991), cellular senescence (Shay et al., 1991) and induction of apoptosis in response to DNA damage (Clarke et al., 1993; Lowe et al., 1993; Lakin and Jackson, 1999). TP53 is arguably the most important tumour suppressor gene, with loss of function mutations in up to 50% of human cancers (Bouaoun et al., 2016). Consequently, the p53 status of a cell line, either wild-type (proficient) or mutant (deficient), can be an important factor in determining the suitability of a cellular model, and hence is an important consideration in design of high throughput genetic screens.

Generation of DNA double strand breaks (DSBs) induces p53-dependent cell-cycle arrest in normal fibroblasts (Di Leonardo et al., 1994), and most CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing approaches rely on DSB generation to achieve efficient editing (Jinek et al., 2012). Recent work has shown that CRISPR-Cas9-associated DSBs in hPSCs (human pluripotent stem cells) induce a p53-mediated apoptotic response, leading to high levels of toxicity and reduced editing efficiency in this background (Ihry et al., 2018). Furthermore, a similar p53-mediated DSB response in wild-type retinal pigment epithelial (RPE-1) cells reportedly severely impaired identification of essential genes in a CRISPR-Cas9 screen when compared to RPE-1 TP53 knockout (TP53^KO) cells (Haapaniemi et al., 2018). In contrast, analysis of data from a small number of additional screens in p53 wild-type RPE-1 cells has shown that performance of successful CRISPR screens, as determined by essential gene identification and enrichment of expected targets, is possible in this cellular background (Brown et al., 2019). This controversy is confounded by the complexity of variation in experimental design between screens with a lack of controlled parallel experiments. To provide more definitive insights into this important debate, we performed parallel CRISPR-Cas9 screens in paired wild-type and TP53^KO cell lines, thereby minimising additional confounding factors that can preclude accurate screen comparisons.

We carried out parallel screens, in wild-type and TP53^KO RPE-1 cells with two independent Cas9-expressing monoclonal populations for each genetic background, selected based on p53 status and high Cas9 cutting efficiency (Figure 1—figure supplement 1). To facilitate high screen sensitivity and in-depth interrogation of p53-mediated responses to CRISPR-Cas9-associated DSBs, we designed a bespoke dual guide RNA library targeting 852 DDR-related genes, with 112 olfactory receptor genes included as non-essential gene controls and 14 sequence-scrambled negative controls (Supplementary file 1). The library was manually curated to include established DDR components, putatively DDR related interactors, and a considerable number of bioinformatically-associated DDR factors. Moreover, the smaller size of this library compared to a whole genome library enabled high guide representation (>1000 x) to be maintained throughout the screen, minimising the impact of this key factor on screen sensitivity (Miles et al., 2016). In addition, our library incorporated a dual guide RNA vector design (Erard et al., 2017) to increase the frequency of functional knockout events in transduced cells compared to the canonical single guide RNA (sgRNA) approach. We reasoned that a vector generating two DSBs per cell may increase detection of differences in screen sensitivity due to variation in DSB responses between genetic backgrounds. Thus, the custom DDR library enables interrogation of p53-mediated DDR events, a cell’s overall responses to DSBs, and the fitness effects of inactivating DDR-related genes. Screens were executed as depicted in Figure 1, and relative enrichments and depletions of gene knockouts in the edited cell populations were determined from guide read counts generated by next-generation Illumina DNA sequencing (Supplementary file 2) using the program MAGeCK (Li et al., 2014; Supplementary file 3).

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In our screens, depletion of core essential genes (as defined by Hart et al., 2017) was clearly evident in both wild-type and TP53^KO backgrounds (Figure 2A and Figure 2—figure supplement 1A). Due to the conservative nature of this essential gene list, additional genes with significant depletions were also identified in both cell lines (Supplementary file 3). A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve showing the classification of essential versus non-essential genes by gene depletion p-value ranks (calculated by MAGeCK) (Figure 2B) demonstrated good performance of both screens. Nevertheless, the TP53^KO screen slightly outperformed the wild-type screen at both harvesting timepoints in terms of detection of essential genes by rank.

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When the significance of gene depletions was considered, we found that essential genes were much more likely to have low adjusted p-values (q-values) in the TP53^KO background, compared to wild-type. In addition, we observed that the day 19 timepoint outperformed the day 15 timepoint, detecting increased numbers of essential genes at a given significance threshold (Figure 2C and Figure 2—figure supplement 1B). The underlying basis behind this differential sensitivity to identifying essential genes lies in the magnitude of the phenotypic effect observed for each guide. While log fold changes (LFCs) across non-core essential (‘not essential’) genes were not significantly different between the two genetic backgrounds (p=0.60), LFCs for core essential genes were significantly lower in the TP53^KO screens compared to screens in TP53 wild-type settings (p=0.0010) (Figure 2D), consistent with wild-type cells initiating a p53-mediated response to Cas9-induced DSBs. This would inhibit the proliferation rates of all transduced cells during the course of the screens, leading to smaller LFCs and a narrower distribution of guides within the population, with a consequent reduction in genes with significant depletion scores. Similar results were seen in our analyses of day 15 samples (Figure 2—figure supplement 1C).

The impact of the p53-mediated response is also evident when comparing screen results from differential enrichment and depletion of genes between the two genetic backgrounds (Figure 2E). As expected, in TP53 wild-type cells, guides targeting TP53 were the most significantly enriched, with guides targeting other components of the p53 pathway showing the most significant differences between the two genetic backgrounds. Guides significantly enriched in the TP53 wild-type background included those targeting CDKN1A that encodes p21, the major downstream mediator of p53-mediated cell cycle arrest (el-Deiry et al., 1993), and those targeting USP28 that encodes a deubiquitylating enzyme that acts to stabilise p53 (Zhang et al., 2006; Cuella-Martin et al., 2016). In contrast, guides targeting genes that were significantly depleted in the wild-type but not the TP53 knockout background included MDM2 and MDM4, which act as negative regulators of p53. MDM2 is an E3 ubiquitin ligase that targets p53 for degradation (Haupt et al., 1997), while MDM4 inhibits p53-dependent transcriptional activity (Francoz et al., 2006). SETDB1, which acts via MDM2, was also enriched in the TP53 wild-type background. This protein forms a complex with p53 and catalyses p53 K370 di-methylation. Attenuation of SETDB1 reduces the level of di-methylation at this site, leading to increased recognition and degradation of p53 by MDM2 (Fei et al., 2015). Furthermore, when we assessed the enrichment/depletion of specific biological pathways between the wild-type and TP53^KO backgrounds, cell cycle and p53 signalling were the two pathways that were enriched (Figure 2—figure supplement 2 and Supplementary file 4).

Genes that are not acting in the p53 pathway were also identified as significantly enriched (e.g. EP300) or depleted (e.g. CCNA2) at a FDR < 0.1 (Supplementary file 3). EP300 was enriched on both genetic backgrounds and has an established role as a tumour suppressor through the regulation of the G₁/S cell-cycle transition (Ait-Si-Ali et al., 2000). CCNA2, or cyclin A2, was depleted on both genetic backgrounds as it interacts with both CDK1 and CDK2 to drive S-phase progression and regulate the G₁/S and G₂/M phases of the cell-cycle (Pagano et al., 1992). Altogether, these results demonstrate that despite reduced screen sensitivity in p53-proficient cells, biologically meaningful enrichment and depletion analyses at the individual gene and pathway levels can, when required, still be performed in TP53 wild-type settings.

To further contextualise the feasibility of performing CRISPR-Cas9 screens in a p53-proficient background, we analysed our screens with five others performed in TP53 wild-type RPE-1 cells. When we performed a comparative ROC curve analysis to assess the screens’ abilities to discriminate between core essential genes and other genes (Figure 3A), this established that the performance of all screens was similar, with the exception of Haapaniemi et al. (2018) data which underperformed in the ability to distinguish essential genes. We then examined the distribution of normalised LFCs for each screen (Figure 3B). This revealed that the core essential genes formed distributions distinct from those of olfactory receptors and other non-essential genes in all wild-type screens, with the exception of the Haapaniemi et al. screen where the separation was minimal (the smaller median LFC in our screen compared to the other four successful screens did not notably hinder our ability to distinguish essential genes). Taken together, these analyses provide further evidence that CRISPR-Cas9 screens can be performed successfully in a p53-proficient background. It appears that the Haapaniemi et al. screen is an outlier in its inability to robustly detect essential genes, possibly due to differences in experimental design and execution, and perhaps reflecting relatively low editing efficiency of the polyclonal RPE-1 population used in this screen. This factor strengthens the importance of carefully selecting clones with high Cas9 editing efficiency and also for the use of biological replicates, to enable recognition of common screen results that are independent of clonal background.

We noted that while the median LFC is higher in the LTRI/MDACC, Hart, UBC and MSKCC screens, the variance is also increased when compared to ours. Consequently, we interrogated the relationship between the standard deviation (SD) of the LFCs and the mean LFC values for each of the wild-type screens. Figure 3C shows that the variance in LFC between guides targeting the same gene is less in our screen than in these other screens. We speculate that this decrease in variance is linked to the much higher gRNA representation kept throughout our screen (>1000 x mean gRNA representation) than in these other screens, although we cannot discard the possibility that the dual-sgRNA system we used is the cause of this effect. High gRNA representation is relevant for the success and reliability of CRISPR-Cas9 screens, with most published recommendations suggesting screening to at least 200x gRNA representation (Aregger et al., 2019) but ideally >500 x (Joung et al., 2017). Importantly, high representation must be maintained throughout cell culture and also in the PCR amplification steps. Sufficient sequencing depth is also essential to maintain the sensitivity achieved through high gRNA representation. Figure 3D demonstrates the variability in guide abundance determined by sequencing reads across the screens analysed. The MSKCC screen is the only dataset to show a distribution with a substantial number of zero reads in the final samples, which accounts for the decreased variance at more negative LFCs in this screen (Figure 3—figure supplement 1). Through modelling the effect of decreased sequencing depth in our data, we demonstrate that low read counts can notably decrease screen sensitivity (Figure 3—figure supplement 2).

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Data files and scripts to produce Figures 2 and 3 are available from Dryad Digital Repository, https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2fqz612kr.

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Author details

1. Anne Ramsay Bowden

   Wellcome/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

   Contribution

   Conceptualization, Resources, Investigation, Visualization, Methodology, Writing - original draft, Writing - review and editing

   Contributed equally with

   David A Morales-Juarez

   Competing interests

   No competing interests declared

   "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-1138-4452

2. David A Morales-Juarez

   Wellcome/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

   Contribution

   Conceptualization, Validation, Investigation, Visualization, Methodology, Writing - original draft, Project administration, Writing - review and editing

   Contributed equally with

   Anne Ramsay Bowden

   Competing interests

   No competing interests declared

   "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-5370-5512

3. Matylda Sczaniecka-Clift

   Wellcome/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

   Contribution

   Investigation, Contributed substantially to the collection of data

   Competing interests

   No competing interests declared

4. Maria Martin Agudo

   Wellcome/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

   Contribution

   Investigation, Contributed substantially to the collection of data

   Competing interests

   No competing interests declared

   "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-3605-9963

5. Natalia Lukashchuk

   Wellcome/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

   Present address

   Oncology Research & Early Development, AstraZeneca, Cambridge, United Kingdom

   Contribution

   Resources, Investigation

   Competing interests

   No competing interests declared

6. John Christopher Thomas

   Wellcome/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

   Contribution

   Conceptualization, Data curation, Software, Formal analysis, Visualization, Methodology, Writing - original draft, Writing - review and editing

   For correspondence

   jct61@cam.ac.uk

   Competing interests

   No competing interests declared

   "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-2425-8412

7. Stephen P Jackson

   Wellcome/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

   Contribution

   Conceptualization, Resources, Supervision, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Writing - review and editing

   For correspondence

   s.jackson@gurdon.cam.ac.uk

   Competing interests

   No competing interests declared

   "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-9317-7937

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