Results
Towards the end of our experiment, the Feng Zhang group at MIT published the crystal structure of SaCas9 in Cell2. Their paper also demonstrated the development of a split SaCas9 system using the FKBP/FRB domains and ABI/PYL domains, similar to our experiment. One facet worth noting is that the Zhang group used the 3-D structure of the protein to inform their split site choices, and out of the three split sites that they chose, the one that worked best was almost identical (one amino acid away) to one of the split sites that we chose using our model. This gives us experimental validation that our model can offer scientists promising insights into choosing viable split sites for proteins without taking into account their 3-D structures.
