CRISPR/Cas9 genome targeting systems have been applied to a variety of species. However, most CRISPR/Cas9 systems reported for plants can only modify one or a few target sites. Here, we report a robust CRISPR/Cas9 vector system, utilizing a plant codon optimized Cas9 gene, for convenient and high-efficiency multiplex genome editing in monocot and dicot plants. We designed PCR-based procedures to rapidly generate multiple sgRNA expression cassettes, which can be assembled into the binary CRISPR/Cas9 vectors in one round of cloning by Golden Gate ligation or Gibson Assembly. With this system, we edited 46 target sites in rice with an average 85.4% rate of mutation, mostly in biallelic and homozygous status. We reasoned that about 16% of the homozygous mutations in rice were generated through the non-homologous end-joining mechanism followed by homologous recombination-based repair. We also obtained uniform biallelic, heterozygous, homozygous, and chimeric mutations in Arabidopsis T1 plants. The targeted mutations in both rice and Arabidopsis were heritable. We provide examples of loss-of-function gene mutations in T0 rice and T1 Arabidopsis plants by simultaneous targeting of multiple (up to eight) members of a gene family, multiple genes in a biosynthetic pathway, or multiple sites in a single gene. This system has provided a versatile toolbox for studying functions of multiple genes and gene families in plants for basic research and genetic improvement.

We developed a de novo protein design strategy to swiftly engineer decoys for neutralizing pathogens that exploit extracellular host proteins to infect the cell. Our pipeline allowed the design, validation, and optimization of de novo hACE2 decoys to neutralize SARS-CoV-2. The best decoy, CTC-445.2, binds with low nanomolar affinity and high specificity to the RBD of the spike protein. Cryo-EM shows that the design is accurate and can simultaneously bind to all three RBDs of a single spike protein. Because the decoy replicates the spike protein target interface in hACE2, it is intrinsically resilient to viral mutational escape. A bivalent decoy, CTC-445.2d, shows ~10-fold improvement in binding. CTC-445.2d potently neutralizes SARS-CoV-2 infection of cells in vitro and a single intranasal prophylactic dose of decoy protected Syrian hamsters from a subsequent lethal SARS-CoV-2 challenge.

We recently described general principles for designing ideal protein structures stabilized by completely consistent local and nonlocal interactions. The principles relate secondary structure patterns to tertiary packing motifs and enable design of different protein topologies. To achieve fine control over protein shape and size within a particular topology, we have extended the design rules by systematically analyzing the codependencies between the lengths and packing geometry of successive secondary structure elements and the backbone torsion angles of the loop linking them. We demonstrate the control afforded by the resulting extended rule set by designing a series of proteins with the same fold but considerable variation in secondary structure length, loop geometry, β-strand registry, and overall shape. Solution NMR structures of four designed proteins for two different folds show that protein shape and size can be precisely controlled within a given protein fold. These extended design principles provide the foundation for custom design of protein structures performing desired functions.de novo design | protein design | ideal protein | control protein shape P rotein design holds promise for applications ranging from therapeutics to biomaterials, with recent progress in designing small molecule binding proteins (1, 2), inhibitors of protein-protein interactions (3, 4), and self-assembling nanomaterials (5-7). Most of these efforts have repurposed naturally occurring scaffolds, which are likely not optimal starting points for creating new functions because they generally contain sequence and structural idiosyncrasies that arose during evolutionary optimization for their natural functions (8). Robust design of new functional proteins would be considerably enabled by the capability of precisely designing from scratch arbitrary protein structures.We previously described general principles that allowed the de novo design of ideal protein structures with five different folds (9). In this paper, we focus on the "variations on a theme" problem of precisely controlling structural variation within the same fold. To achieve such control, we begin by characterizing the coupling between loop backbone geometry and the packing of the flanking secondary elements. We then use the resulting extended set of design principles to systematically vary structure for two different folds and describe the experimental characterization of five of these de novo designed proteins. ResultsLocal Structure Building Blocks. The design rules described in our previous paper relate the packing orientation of ββ-, βα-, and αβ-units to the length of the loop connecting them (9). Here, we begin by extending these rules to the level of specific loop conformations to allow more detailed control over local geometry and overall protein topology.It is convenient to describe protein local geometry by using the ABEGO (10) alphabet illustrated in Fig. 1A. "A" indicates the alpha region of the Ramachandran plot (11); "B," the beta region; "G" and "E", the po...