PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Peter C DeWeirdt
AU  - Kendall R Sanson
AU  - Ruth E Hanna
AU  - Mudra Hegde
AU  - Annabel K Sangree
AU  - Christine Strand
AU  - Nicole S Persky
AU  - John G Doench
TI  - Genetic screens in isogenic mammalian cell lines without single cell cloning
AID  - 10.1101/677385
DP  - 2019 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 677385
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/06/23/677385.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/06/23/677385.full
AB  - Isogenic pairs of cell lines, which differ by a single genetic modification, are powerful tools for understanding gene function. Generating such pairs for mammalian cells, however, is labor-intensive, time-consuming, and impossible in some cell types. Here we present an approach to create isogenic pairs of cells and screen them with genome-wide CRISPR-Cas9 libraries to generate genetic interaction maps. We queried the anti-apoptotic genes BCL2L1 and MCL1, and the DNA damage repair gene PARP1, via 25 genome-wide screens across 4 cell lines. For all three genes, we identify a rich set of both expected and novel buffering and synthetic lethal interactions. Further, we compare the interactions observed in genetic space to those found when targeting these genes with small molecules and identify hits that may inform the clinical uses for these inhibitors. We anticipate that this methodology will be broadly useful to comprehensively study genes of interest across many cell types.