Existing protocols for dual guide RNA cloning rely on synthesised DNA oligonucleotides of >100 bp that contain both guide RNA sequences, and are therefore not reusable in alternative experimental designs. Here, we describe a single-step protocol to rapidly and inexpensively generate vectors expressing two guide RNAs (gRNAs) simultaneously, which allows re-usage of gRNAs oligonucleotides from one experimental design to another. This protocol is applicable to cloning gRNAs into virtually any CRISPR/Cas9 backbone that allows cloning by Golden Gate, by adapting the primer design. Here, we provide details for cloning gRNAs into vectors with BbsI and BsmBI sites, two of the most frequently found enzymes in CRISPR/Cas9 gRNA expression cassettes.

This protocol has been successfully applied to delete pancreatic islet enhancers that harbour type 2 diabetes variants and to validate enhancer-promoter interactions (Miguel-Escalada et al., Nature Genetics 2019).

In the future, we foresee that this simple protocol may also be applied to target coding sequences, as well as to target other important kinds of noncoding regulatory elements, including lncRNAs, miRNAs, and chromatin structural anchor points.