No abstract

Conditional control of RNA structure and function has emerged as an effective toolkit. Here, a strategy based on a one‐step introduction of diacylation linkers and azide groups on the 2′‐OH of RNA is advance. Selected from eight phosphine reagents, it is found that 2‐(diphenylphosphino)ethylamine has excellent performance in reducing azides via a Staudinger reduction to obtain the original RNA. It is demonstrated that the enzymatic activities of Cas13 and Cas9 can be regulated by chemically modified guide RNAs, and further achieved ligand‐induced gene editing in living cells by a controllable CRISPR/Cas9 system.

It is important to develop small moelcule-based methods to modulate gene editing and expression in human cells. The roles of the G-quadruplex (G4) in biological systems have been widely studied. Here, G4-guided RNA engineering is performed to generate guide RNA with G4-forming units (G4-gRNA). We further demonstrate that chemical targeting of G4-gRNAs holds promise as a general approach for modulating gene editing and expression in human cells. The rich structural diversity of RNAs offers a reservoir of targets for small molecules to bind, thus creating the potential to modulate RNA biology.

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