dCas9-VPR Enhanced CRISPRa Nuclease

Characteristics

Enhanced CRISPRa system with stronger activation than VP64 alone. Achieves 10-1000× upregulation at many loci. Particularly effective for activating genes with weak endogenous expression. More potent but slightly larger than simple VP64 fusion.

Architecture: Catalytically dead Cas9 fused to tripartite activator combining VP64, p65 activation domain from NF-κB, and Rta from Epstein-Barr virus.

References

1. Mali et al. (2013). CAS9 transcriptional activators for target specificity screening and paired nickases for cooperative genome engineering. Nat Biotechnol - Mali 2013 Cas9 Nickase
2. Chavez et al. (2015). Highly efficient Cas9-mediated transcriptional programming. Nat Methods - Chavez 2015 VPR