Mapping the Genetic Landscape of DNA Double-strand Break Repair

Abstract

Cells repair DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) through a complex set of pathways that are critical for maintaining genomic integrity. Here we present Repair-seq, a high-throughput screening approach that measures the effects of thousands of genetic perturbations on the distribution of mutations introduced at targeted DNA lesions. Using Repair-seq, we profiled DSB repair outcomes induced by two programmable nucleases (Cas9 and Cas12a) after knockdown of 476 genes involved in DSB repair or associated processes in the presence or absence of oligonucleotides for homology-directed repair (HDR). The resulting data enabled principled, data-driven inference of DSB end joining and HDR pathways and demonstrated that repair outcomes with superficially similar sequence architectures can have markedly different genetic dependencies. Systematic interrogation of these dependencies then uncovered unexpected relationships among DSB repair genes and isolated incompletely characterized repair mechanisms. This work provides a foundation for understanding the complex pathways of DSB repair and for optimizing genome editing across modalities.