BE FF: Base Editors Functional Finder Identification of potential base editors to correct point
mutations and predict precise and synonymous corrections
Base editing is a genome-editing approach that employs the CRISPR/Cas system to precisely install point mutations within the genome. A cytidine or adenosine deaminase enzyme is fused to a deactivated Cas and converts C to T or A to G, respectively. The diversified repertoire of base editors, varied in their Cas and deaminase enzymes, provides a wide range of targeting possibilities. However, existing base-editors can only induce transition substitutions in a specified region determined by the base editor, thus, they are incompatible for many point mutations. Here, we present BE-FF (Base Editors Functional Finder), a novel computational tool that identifies suitable base editors to correct the translated sequence erred by a given point mutation. In case a perfect correction of the point mutation is not possible, BE-FF detects synonymous corrections to produce the reference protein. To assess the potential of BE-FF, we analysed a database of human pathogenic point mutations and found suitable base editors for 60.9% of the transition mutations. Importantly, 19.4% of them were made possible only by synonymous corrections. Notably, we detected 298 cases in which pathogenic mutations caused by transversions were potentially repairable by base editing via synonymous corrections, although it had been thought impractical.
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