Efficient targeted gene disruption in Xenopus embryos using engineered transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs)

Transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) are an approach for directed gene disruption and have been proved to be effective in various animal models. Here, we report that TALENs can induce somatic mutations in Xenopus embryos with reliably high efficiency and that such mutations are heritable through germ-line transmission. We modified the Golden Gate method for TALEN assembly to make the product suitable for RNA transcription and microinjection into Xenopus embryos. Eight pairs of TALENs were constructed to target eight Xenopus genes, and all resulted in indel mutations with high efficiencies of up to 95.7% at the targeted loci. Furthermore, mutations induced by TALENs were highly efficiently passed through the germ line to F-1 frogs. Together with simple and reliable PCR-based approaches for detecting TALEN-induced mutations, our results indicate that TALENs are an effective tool for targeted gene editing/knockout in Xenopus.