Disrupting pegRNA intramolecular complementarity via PBS and spacer sequence alterations can enhance prime editing efficiency

Biczók, Zsuzsanna and Krausz, Sarah L. and Simon, Dorottya Anna and Tóth, Eszter and Varga, Éva and Annus, Tamás and Huba, Flóra and Varga, Máté and Bakos, Éva and Fodor, Elfrieda and Welker, Ervin (2026) Disrupting pegRNA intramolecular complementarity via PBS and spacer sequence alterations can enhance prime editing efficiency. NUCLEIC ACIDS RESEARCH, 54 (7). No. gkag292. ISSN 0305-1048 (print); 1362-4962 (online)

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Abstract

The length and sequence of the primer binding site (PBS) are critical for efficient prime editing, and its intramolecular complementarity with the prime editing guide RNA (pegRNA) spacer is a major drawback. We investigated the effects of these factors by literature analyses and by testing over 300 modified pegRNAs with weakened PBS-spacer interactions. It has been suggested that the effective PBS length for plasmid-delivered pegRNAs without end protection is considerably longer than what efficient priming requires due to exonuclease digestion of the PBS ends; however, analysing literature data of over 3000 pegRNAs revealed no significant shift in the optimal PBS length for epegRNAs compared to conventional pegRNAs. We also found improvement in editing efficiency with up to seven-fold when mismatches were introduced in the spacer or PBS sequence disrupting complementarity, although this effect is more pronounced with non-optimal PBS lengths. A combination of spacer mismatches and PBS deletions led to further editing improvements, even compared to the optimal PBS, although finding the best combination requires extensive optimization. Here, we achieved near-optimal editing efficiency in the majority of cases without the need for prior pegRNA optimization by using SPELL (Streamlined Prime Editing with fixed-Length PBS Leverage), a prime editing approach that employs a 17–20 nucleotide-long PBS with a single nucleotide deletion.

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