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Eagles will not be punished for how team handled Jalen Hurts’ blood clots situation, per report

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news The NFL concluded the process to clear Hurts for Week 5 in London was handled appropriately

Oct 20, 2026

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The Philadelphia Eagles will not face any punishment from the NFL regarding how they handled Jalen Hurts’ medical situation, according to The Athletic. On Monday, the team announced that Hurts is expected to miss the rest of the 2026 season after blood clots were discovered in his lungs.

The league has reportedly concluded that the process, which led to Hurts being cleared to play in Week 5 vs. the Jacksonville Jaguars in London with a superficial blood clot, “was handled appropriately.” The league will not levy any punishment on the franchise for how it handled its medical process, or for Hurts not being given an injury designation ahead of the game.

On Thursday of last week, the Eagles issued a statement saying that a superficial blood clot in Hurts’ calf experienced movement, leading the team to rule him out for their Week 6 matchup against the Carolina Panthers. The Eagles also revealed that the NFL was made aware of the situation last week. It was the first of several confusing developments that led to more questions than answers.

Just days after Hurts’ blood clot diagnosis became public, it was reported that the team did not plan to place him on injured reserve. Hours later, Hurts was being placed on injured reserve. Then came the bombshell on Monday, when a follow-up scan revealed Hurts’ superficial vein thrombosis had developed into deep vein thrombosis, including “bilateral pulmonary emboli,” meaning blood clots were now in both of Hurts’ lungs.

It’s not exactly clear why Hurts was allowed to play a football game and take a long international flight with a superficial blood clot, or whether the Eagles’ decisions made his situation more serious. But the NFL has concluded that the team took the appropriate steps in handling the issue.

Jonathan Jones offered additional reporting to help clear up some misconceptions about this wild story.

news Was Hurts forced to stay awake in London?

There was a report that Hurts was told by doctors not to sleep as a precaution due to his blood clot, so he didn’t sleep for 36 hours before playing against the Jaguars. This report was hard to believe for more reasons than one. Tom Pelissero eventually walked back this reporting, saying Hurts’ agent clarified that while the quarterback was up until early Sunday morning being evaluated at a hospital, he was able to sleep before the game.

According to The Athletic, Eagles players and personnel were advised ahead of their London trip to try to stay awake to remain on Eastern time. Hurts was not told to stay awake because of his medical condition. He returned to the team hotel around 2:45 a.m. local time on Sunday and slept until around 10 a.m. Hurts also took a nap at the stadium before kickoff.

news Blood clot timeline

Saturday, Oct. 10: Superficial blood clot discovered in Hurts’ calf during a visit to the Cleveland Clinic in London following a team walk-through.

Wednesday, Oct. 14: Follow-up appointment in Philly reveals superficial blood clot had moved, causing Eagles to shut down Hurts indefinitely. He undergoes further testing.

Monday, Oct. 19: Eagles and Hurts’ agent, Nicole Lynn, issue a joint statement laying out the updated diagnosis of deep vein thrombosis. Here’s the full statement:

“Over the last few days, Jalen Hurts has received comprehensive medical evaluations by physician experts. In the interest of transparency, we are providing additional information on the diagnosis and treatment plan related to his condition.

“Jalen was initially diagnosed by specialists in London with a left calf superficial vein thrombosis. After further testing and monitoring, the current diagnosis is a deep vein thrombosis, as well as bilateral pulmonary emboli. He is clinically stable and has no significant functional limitations. His treatment should only involve anticoagulation (i.e. “blood thinners”). During this time, he will not be allowed to participate in any contact activities, including football.

“Jalen’s prognosis is very good, and we expect a full recovery. We anticipate that he will have the opportunity to resume contact football activities when off the blood thinners. In the meantime, he will remain active around the team and continue to condition. More importantly, we anticipate that he will have no long-term effects.”

3 ways to turn your old Wii Remote into a Home Assistant controller

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Adam has a degree in Engineering and has a life-long interest in technology. He has been writing for over a decade for various print and online publications, with a focus on consumer tech. He joined How-To Geek in 2024 while working at Pocket-lint.
As well as being a long-term fan of Apple products, he also has a strong interest in smart home tech, running a Home Assistant server at home to automate all his smart home devices. He believes that the ideal smart home should work with minimal interaction from the user, with automations running as if by magic rather than requiring you to push buttons on a control panel. You can find more of his work on Muck Rack.

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Despite its age, the Wii Remote can still be a useful device. It includes Bluetooth connectivity, motion sensors, an infrared camera, and multiple physical buttons. These features make it a great option for interacting with your smart home, and there are a few ways that you may be able to get your Wii Remote to control Home Assistant.

Replace the electronics with OpenMote

An ESP32 turns a Wii Remote into a smart home controller

ESP32 development boards are awesome for smart home projects. They’re cheap and versatile and small enough to fit inside many devices. That’s exactly what the custom OpenMote board does with your Wii Remote.

OpenMote replaces your Wii Remote’s original circuit board with a custom board built around an ESP32-S3. It’s designed to fit inside the original Wii Remote and work with its physical buttons. It effectively turns the game controller into a completely different device that you can use to control your smart home.

OpenMote runs ESPHome and connects to your home Wi-Fi network. When you press a button on the Wii Remote, the information is passed directly to Home Assistant, and you can use it to control devices or run automations. You get to choose what each button or motion action does.

The IR emitter can learn codes from your IR remotes, so you can use your Wii Remote to control your TV or turn on your old AC unit. You can even use the device for its original purpose and pair it as a standard Bluetooth LE gamepad with a PC, Android phone, or Steam Deck.

There are currently two options available for pre-order on Crowd Supply until the end of October 2026: a fully assembled remote and a PCB to mod your own Wii Remote. Orders are expected to ship in February 2027, and the Home Assistant firmware is already available on GitHub.

Use CWiid to connect your Wii Remote to a Raspberry Pi

Your Wii Remote can talk to a Pi over Bluetooth

science A Wii Remote sitting on a table.

CWiid is a collection of open-source Linux tools that you can use to get a Wii Remote to communicate with a Linux computer such as a Raspberry Pi over Bluetooth. You don’t need to take your remote apart or install any custom PCBs; it should work with a standard Wii Remote.

There’s a very useful YouTube video by The Raspberry Pi Guy demonstrating how to connect your Wii Remote to a Raspberry Pi, with a GitHub repository containing an installation script and some sample Python code.

The video only shows how to get your Wii Remote to communicate with the Raspberry Pi rather than Home Assistant, but there are several ways that you could use this setup to control your smart home. You could trigger Home Assistant actions using the REST API via Python scripts that run on the Pi or use a Python script to publish the received inputs from the Wii Remote using MQTT, and Home Assistant could then respond to those MQTT messages.

There’s also a tool called wminput which lets you use the Wii Remote like a mouse. You could connect the Raspberry Pi to your TV via HDMI, open Home Assistant in a web browser, and use the Wii Remote to control your smart home dashboard.

Control Home Assistant in Windows using Touchmote

Make your Wii Remote into a mouse

science A black cat on top of a couch holding a Nintendo Wii remote.

Touchmote is Windows software that lets you use a Wii Remote as a mouse or touchscreen input device. It was originally intended to let people control Windows using a Wii Remote, and unlike CWiid, it’s a Windows app rather than Linux tools that require custom scripts.

You don’t need a Wii console or a Raspberry Pi; the Wii Remote talks directly to your Windows computer. The original project is old, but there’s a fork with a build that was updated as recently as October 2026. The Wii Remote detects infrared light from the Wii Sensor Bar, allowing Touchmote to calculate where you’re pointing, and there’s support for using two sensor bars positioned both above and below the screen.

You can use the Wii Remote to control the pointer in Windows by moving the remote around and using the buttons to interact with whatever you’re pointing at. You could build a touch-friendly Home Assistant dashboard and use the Wii Remote to interact with the dashboard items and control your smart home.

This means you don’t need any custom code. Once Touchmote is configured, you can open the Home Assistant dashboard in a browser and use the Wii Remote to control the pointer to interact with it.

Your Wii Remote may still have life left in it

It’s insane that the Nintendo Wii is 20 years old; it only seems like yesterday that I handled my first Wii Remote. Two decades on, that remote can still be a useful device, whether you want to replace its PCB or just use it to control a Home Assistant dashboard.

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Your carrier can see every website you visit on Android. Here’s how to hide it from them

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Aggy is a veteran writer and editor in the technology and gaming space. Having served as a Managing Editor for high-traffic digital publications, alongside being an editor and consultant for over a dozen sites. Aggy’s published work spans a wide and respected array of tech and gaming outlets, including WePC, Screen Rant, How-To Geek, Android Police, PC Invasion, and Try Hard Guides.

Beyond editorial work, Aggy’s direct experience in the tech sphere extends to app development. Aggy has published two games under Tales and is always eager to learn and do more. He also likes working on computers and researching in his spare time.

He knows about Windows, Linux, Audio, Video, and much more.

Your carrier sees a lot more than you think it does, and it’s all because everything you do is being logged. Before any of the encryption you’re used to seeing kicks in, your phone has already sent your carrier a plain-text record of every site you’re trying to reach. That happens constantly, in the background, for every app on your device, not just your browser.

Your carrier can see the sites you visit

They see your traffic because your phone sends requests in plain text

nature nothing phone 3a pro side view showing website.

Browsing on your phone relies on DNS to convert site names into the IP addresses the network needs to find them. For years, DNS wasn’t encrypted at all, so anyone could read those requests as they crossed your connection. On an Android phone with stock settings, each time you launch an app or load a site, the phone fires off one of these unprotected requests through your carrier’s network to its own DNS servers.

Since nothing’s hidden, anyone in the right spot on the network, including your carrier, can watch and log every domain your phone asks for. A lot of people think the padlock in their browser means their carrier is blind to what they’re doing, but that’s only kind of right.

HTTPS does a solid job scrambling the actual content of your browsing. So the page’s text, your login info, the full URL, and plenty of other things are secure. However, it doesn’t protect the DNS lookup, which has to happen before that scrambled connection even starts. Your phone has to ask for a site’s address before it can connect, and that request goes out unprotected.

On top of that, even while the scrambled HTTPS setup is happening, your device transmits the site’s name as plain text in the SNI field, which your carrier can read too. Carriers keep all these DNS records around for several reasons. Some of it is just normal network upkeep, like directing traffic and catching problems.

But those logs are also worth money, since carriers can use them to build profiles on subscribers and target ads. Many places also have laws requiring carriers to retain this data for police. Some carriers even grab DNS requests and reroute them to their own machines, no matter what your settings say. So your carrier ends up with a pretty complete list of almost every site and service your phone connects to.

You can hide your traffic by encrypting your DNS

You just need to change a few settings in Android or Chrome

You can either do a phone-wide setting called Private DNS that’s baked into Android, or a browser-level setting inside Google Chrome. They work differently and cover different chunks of your traffic.

Android was actually the first big mobile OS to support encrypted DNS across the whole system, adding it way back in Android 9. Private DNS encrypts your DNS requests, so your carrier can’t read them as they pass through its network.

To switch it on, head to Settings, then Network & Internet or Connections on Samsung phones, then Advanced or More Connection Settings, and tap Private DNS. You can pick Off, Automatic, or a Private DNS provider hostname. The default Automatic mode tries to use encryption if your carrier supports it, but if it doesn’t, your phone quietly goes back to sending requests unprotected. So you might think you’re covered when you aren’t.

To make sure your DNS is always encrypted, select “Private DNS provider hostname” and enter the address of a third-party DNS provider you trust. Solid picks include Cloudflare (1dot1dot1dot1.cloudflare-dns.com), Google (dns.google), Quad9 (dns.quad9.net), and AdGuard (dns.adguard-dns.com). In this mode, Android forces every app, background service, and browser on your phone to use that encrypted connection.

If it can’t reach the encrypted server for some reason, it just stops looking up sites until it can, instead of falling back to your carrier’s unprotected servers.

Chrome has its own DNS encryption option called Secure DNS, which uses a slightly different protocol called DNS-over-HTTPS. You’ll find it under Settings, then Privacy and Security, then Use Secure DNS. Out of the box, it’s set to use your current provider, so if your carrier doesn’t support encrypted DNS, Chrome keeps sending lookups unprotected. To lock it down, flip it to “Choose another provider” and choose something like Cloudflare or Google from the list.

The big difference is what each one covers. Android’s Private DNS covers everything on your phone: every app, every background process, the whole lot. Chrome’s Secure DNS only covers what you do inside Chrome. If you want your entire phone protected, the Android-level option is the one to pick.

Encrypting your DNS does not hide everything

You still need a VPN to completely hide your traffic

nature Bunch of widgets on Galaxy Z Fold home screen.

Encrypting your DNS is a real step up for privacy, but it doesn’t make you invisible to your carrier. DNS encryption only handles the part where your phone looks up a site’s address. After that, your phone still has to actually reach that site over your carrier’s network, and there are a few ways your carrier can still work out where you’re headed.

The most obvious one is the destination IP address. When your phone connects to a web server, the carrier sees the IP address you’re connecting to. If a site has its own dedicated IP, your carrier can figure out which site it is just by looking that IP up. Giant hosting companies and content networks make this tougher since millions of sites share the same IPs, but plenty of sites can still be picked out this way.

Then there’s the SNI problem again. Even with encrypted DNS, your phone still transmits the site’s name as plain text while the initial connection is being set up, so a carrier watching your traffic can read it right there.

There’s a newer feature called Encrypted Client Hello that’s supposed to fix the SNI problem by encrypting that part of the connection too. Chrome, Edge, and Firefox already support it, but Safari doesn’t yet, and a lot of sites and hosting companies haven’t adopted it.

Still, until it catches on, SNI leaks are one of the easiest ways for carriers to tell what you’re visiting.

That doesn’t mean encrypting DNS is pointless, because unencrypted DNS is the simplest and cheapest way for carriers to log everything you do in bulk, totally automatically. Encrypting it forces them to work much harder if they want to track you, and it also protects you from things like DNS hijacking, ad injection, and your carrier quietly rerouting your lookups.

If you want more complete protection from people looking at what you’re doing, a VPN is the next step. When you run a full-tunnel VPN on Android, it encrypts all your traffic and routes it through a single server, so your carrier just sees a stream of encrypted data going to one IP address.

You’ll never be completely secure

Turning on Private DNS on Android takes about thirty seconds and is well worth it, but it’s not a complete fix. Your carrier can still figure out where you’re headed. Encrypted DNS removes the easiest way for your carrier to track you, and because the Android setting covers your whole phone, you get that protection without trusting a VPN provider.

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Why copying one giant file is a terrible way to test your SSD’s speed

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Ismar is a Senior Author at How-To Geek. He previously worked as a writer, editor, and general manager at a content agency before joining the team in 2023.

He began his writing career in 2021 after completing a BA in English Language and Literature. Beyond How-To Geek, Ismar has contributed to Red Stag Fulfillment and Authority Hacker. He has also worked on various SEO projects to help clients improve their search visibility.

Ismar has been around Windows PCs since the age of three, so friends and family naturally chose him as the resident tech support. His projects often involve tinkering, such as disassembling mechanical keyboards and gaming mice to mod his beloved gear.

He also enjoys pushing hardware to the max through overclocking while staying on a reasonable budget. An avid gamer, Ismar has logged thousands of hours across various genres, including first-person shooters, RPGs, racing games, and roguelites.

When he is not at his desk, he is probably exploring other people’s phones to discover their quirks and features or experimenting with the latest AI tools.

In his free time, Ismar enjoys spending time with his wife, working out at the gym, playing guitar and bass, cooking gourmet meals, and traveling. Above all else, he’s a proud cat owner.

You’ve just bought a new SSD and want to put it to the test, so you grab a large zip file and copy it between your two drives. Monitoring the transfer speed in real time seems like a straightforward way to see how fast your new SSD is.

The test does tell you something about the SSD’s performance, just not necessarily what you think it does about the drive itself. In reality, the speeds you see can be incredibly misleading due to several factors, including SLC caching.

Copying a file tests the entire transfer, not just the SSD

You’d think copying a file is about as real-world a test for an SSD as it gets, but it’s a long way from being a reliable benchmark. Even under ideal conditions, the transfer speed is limited by the weakest link.

If you’re copying the file from one folder to another within the same SSD, it’s not a great way to measure its peak performance because the drive is splitting its internal bandwidth between reading and writing data. And if the file is particularly large, or the SSD is already mostly full, it can forcefully trigger garbage collection, further contributing to reduced performance.

All these factors turn the test into a mixed read/write workload, and while it’s good for testing that specific task, you won’t see the drive reach its peak sequential read or write speeds.

Copying a large file from one SSD to the one you’re testing is a considerably better way to gauge its sequential write performance, but it introduces a different set of potential bottlenecks.

The available free space on both drives, the source drive’s speed, available bandwidth through the motherboard and connection, the USB enclosure and cable, RAM caching, background activity, and how Windows handles the transfer can all affect the results.

The bottom line is that this test measures performance in that particular scenario. The speeds you measure are relevant to that task, which can be useful if, for example, you frequently transfer files from your internal SSD to an external one, but they don’t tell you much about the SSD’s overall performance.

A large enough file transfer can reveal cached and sustained write speeds, but not overall SSD performance

It’s fast until it isn’t

science The SanDisk Extreme PRO Portable SSD with USB4 and its USB-C cable.

While moving a single large file isn’t the be-all and end-all of SSD testing, it’s not entirely useless. Let’s say you’ve accounted for the main bottlenecks I discussed earlier: an empty SSD to write to, a large file that’s going to fill most of it, a source drive that’s fast enough to keep up, and a motherboard or USB enclosure with enough bandwidth to avoid limiting the transfer.

When you first start copying the file, you might see write speeds relatively close to the SSD’s advertised sequential write speed.

However, as the transfer goes on, you might see a sudden, drastic drop in speed. It’s not uncommon for transfer rates to fall from something as high as 4GB/s to just 80MB/s or even less. You might think something is wrong with your supposedly blazing-fast NVMe SSD, the cable, or your operating system, but this can be completely normal for modern TLC and QLC drives.

This happens because these drives often use something called a pseudo-SLC cache. SLC NAND flash stores one bit per cell, while TLC and QLC store three and four bits per cell, respectively. Storing fewer bits per cell allows for faster writes, so the SSD’s controller can use a portion of its TLC or QLC NAND as if it were SLC by temporarily storing just one bit per cell. This lets the drive write data much faster without the cost of dedicated SLC flash, before folding that data into its normal TLC or QLC format later.

The problem with this so-called pseudo-SLC cache is that it has a limited capacity. Once the available cache fills up faster than the drive can free space, write speeds can drop to the drive’s native TLC or QLC write speed, depending on its design.

These aren’t “fake” speeds. Pseudo-SLC caching allows SSDs to achieve blazing-fast transfer rates while remaining relatively affordable. The drawback is that you’ll eventually encounter the drive’s sustained write speeds if your transfer is large enough to exhaust the available cache.

It’s worth noting that the amount of available SLC cache can vary significantly between SSD models and capacities, as can their post-cache write speeds. Both affect how long a drive can maintain its initial transfer rate and how fast it writes once the cache fills up.

Moving small files exposes performance differences a giant transfer can’t measure

Small files follow different rules

science samsung-frame-tv-box-external-ssd

The “real” problem with moving a single large file to test an SSD is that sequential speeds don’t tell you much about its random read/write performance, which can be much slower in terms of raw throughput and is often more relevant to everyday use.

For example, games and programs may need to load many smaller files or chunks of data from different locations rather than read a single file from start to finish. Copying folders full of small files can behave similarly, unlike copying one large file.

Interestingly, random read/write performance doesn’t always scale as much as sequential speeds with newer PCIe generations. That’s why you shouldn’t assume an SSD will perform better just because it advertises higher maximum bandwidth.

You need to look at independent tests of SSDs in your price range to determine which offers the best value, especially if you aren’t buying the SSD for its snappy sequential speeds.

Check the specs and run multiple tests to determine an SSD’s performance

Testing how quickly your SSD handles large file transfers can be a useful indicator of its cached and sustained write speeds, but you need to combine it with synthetic benchmarks and real-world workloads to get the full picture.

But before you even run tests, a lot of an SSD’s performance can be deduced from its spec sheet. TLC costs more, but it’s better in every aspect than QLC, and the presence of DRAM cache can also have a pretty noticeable impact on performance, especially if you keep your SSD mostly full at all times.

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Get $1,000 off the Nikon Z8 and take high-quality photos and videos anywhere

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Saeed Wazir is a South Africa-based journalist with over 15 years of IT experience and a love for reading and writing. He began his career repairing PCs and setting up networks for small businesses and corporate clients. Working in the field and an constantly traveling eventually took its toll and and he decided to follow his passion and start writing.

He now uses his tech expertise to write articles about the latest laptops, tablets, and PCs for XDA developers and Pocket-lint. When he’s not looking for the latest gadgets, he’s relaxing on the beach with his family or exploring open-world PC games.

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Professional and amateur photographers need the best equipment to take incredible photos and videos. Nikon’s Z8 is an excellent choice for any job, and you can now get it for $1,000 off in a bundle that includes all the accessories you’ll need for a shoot.

science Nikon Z8 square

Nikon Z8

Nikon’s Z8 is a pro-grade hybrid camera capable of capturing stunning videos and photos.

Get 23% off Nikon’s Z8 camera and take your photography to the next level

Accessories included

science Nikon Z8

The Z8 is a pro-grade mirrorless camera that shares many of the flagship Z9’s features, but in a more manageable size. It’s a lightweight, versatile tool equally capable of shooting high-resolution video and stunning photos.

There’s no compromise on performance, and the Z8 can compete with the best of them thanks to its 45.7 MP stacked CMOS full-frame sensor and Expeed 7 image processor. For photos, the Z8 can shoot up to 20 fps in RAW and 30 fps in JPEG. It can also take up to 120 fps at 11MP. Other notable features include a 493-point phase-detect autofocus system and eye and subject detection. You also get a pre-release capture feature that records images up to one second before you press the shutter button and up to four seconds after.

The Nikon is at home with video, recording up to 125 minutes of 4K at up to 120 fps. It can also record 8K at 30 and 60 fps, depending on the format.

Everything’s housed in a tough magnesium-alloy, carbon-fiber body that measures 5.7 x 4.7 x 3.3 inches and weighs 2.01 lbs with the battery and memory card. The body is sealed to protect it from dust and moisture, so it should work in all weather conditions without a hitch.

The Nikon Z8 bundle is packed with all the accessories you’ll need to start shooting. It includes the camera and essentials like the battery, charger, USB cable, and HDMI/USB cable clip. You also get the accessory shoe cover, strap, body cap, and rubber eye cup. The 128GB model offers decent storage space for photos and videos, and everything fits in the sling camera shoulder bag. When you’re done shooting, you can use the six-piece cleaning kit to get your gear back to tip-top condition.

Nikon’s Z8 is one of the most versatile mirrorless cameras you can buy, and it’s worth it if you want a durable photography tool that will last for years. Now’s the best time to buy it: it’s at its lowest price in a year, with 23% off on Amazon. You pay $3,297 and save a whopping $1,000 off the full $4,297 retail price. Don’t hesitate because stock is limited, and deals like this don’t come around every day.

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I built a tiny movie library around films no streaming service can be trusted to keep

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Adam has a degree in Engineering and has a life-long interest in technology. He has been writing for over a decade for various print and online publications, with a focus on consumer tech. He joined How-To Geek in 2024 while working at Pocket-lint.
As well as being a long-term fan of Apple products, he also has a strong interest in smart home tech, running a Home Assistant server at home to automate all his smart home devices. He believes that the ideal smart home should work with minimal interaction from the user, with automations running as if by magic rather than requiring you to push buttons on a control panel. You can find more of his work on Muck Rack.

Streaming has made watching movies incredibly convenient, but that convenience comes at a higher cost than just the rising subscription fees. Movies can disappear from services, or the available versions can change. I decided to build a small permanent library of movies I don’t trust streaming services with.

Movies often disappear from streaming

Rights issues can make even famous movies impossible to access

nature news Kelson in the Bone Temple in 28 Years Later.
Credit: Sony Pictures Entertainment

When a movie you love is on a streaming service you subscribe to, everything is great. You can watch the movie whenever you want without having to pay anything extra. You know that you can always find the movie the next time you want to watch it.

The trouble is that it isn’t always true. Movies don’t always stay on streaming services, and in some cases, when they disappear from one service, they don’t appear on any of the others either, making the movie impossible to stream.

The movie 28 Days Later is a prime example. Fox Searchlight Pictures, which was then bought by Disney, distributed the movie. Ahead of the release of the third movie, 28 Years Later, the rights to the original movie moved from Disney to Sony, meaning that Disney could no longer stream the movie on its services.

Sony hadn’t yet put a new digital release into distribution, so for several months in 2024, the original movie wasn’t available to stream on any platform. Even worse, it wasn’t available to rent or purchase digitally, and the DVD and Blu-ray releases were out of print, leaving second-hand physical copies as the only practical (legal) way to watch. Thankfully, the movie is now available again through Sony.

This is far from the only example. Movies regularly move to different platforms or disappear from streaming entirely.

Sometimes the movie stays, but the version changes

Availability isn’t always the problem

Even when movies don’t disappear from streaming completely, the versions that are available on streaming services may change. You may still be able to watch the movie, but not the version you’d always enjoyed in the past.

One example is the classic 1971 drama The French Connection, starring Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider. In 2023, users started to notice that the version showing on streaming platform Criterion Channel was missing a six-second sequence containing a racial slur. The edit wasn’t particularly skillfully done, with the scene jumping to a later point in the conversation.

Perhaps the most famous examples of movies changing significantly from the original versions are the original Star Wars movies. George Lucas, in his infinite wealth wisdom, has made multiple changes to the movies over the years, including several edits to the scene with Han and Greedo and completely removing an actor from a scene and replacing him with a different actor. Some of the most painful edits are the shoehorning of terrible computer-generated scenes into movies famous for having incredible practical effects.

Buying digitally isn’t always the solution

Even downloaded files aren’t under your full control

nature news Movies in an Apple TV library, with the Download option selected for one of the movies.

You might think that if you buy a digital copy of a movie, you no longer have to worry about the movie disappearing or being changed from its original form. This isn’t always the case, however.

People who had bought The French Connection found that the copy that they had access to was also missing six seconds, even if they had bought the movie before the edits were made. There was also a Reddit post that blew up recently, from someone who had bought the extended editions of The Lord of the Rings movies, only to find that they could no longer access them. While Google eventually put this down to a UI bug rather than access having been revoked, it’s still the case that the poster was initially unable to watch the movies they’d bought and paid for.

Apple currently offers one of the best solutions in terms of purchased content. You can download movies you purchase from Apple and access them offline, and those files will remain unchanged even if the movie is edited at a later date. However, even then, you can only watch the content via your Apple Account, and if you lose the downloaded copy and Apple loses the rights to the movie, you may not be able to download it again.

My tiny movie library is safe from the whims of streaming services

Physical media for safety and streaming for new content

nature news A DVD of the movie The Third Man on a desk.

All of the above means that it’s simply not possible to rely on streaming or even digital downloads for movies. Those movies can be changed drastically or even completely disappear, leaving you without access to the version of the movie you want to watch.

That’s why I’ve built a small library of the movies that I absolutely don’t want to lose access to. I’ve bought and kept physical copies of movies such as The Lord of the Rings extended editions because I watch them at least once a year. It would break my heart to lose access to them, as well as the huge amount of incredible extras that come with the DVDs. I also have copies of other movies I couldn’t live without, such as the original theatrical cut of Star Wars, The Third Man, The Big Lebowski, North by Northwest, and Way Out West.

I’ve ripped all of these movies, and they’re part of my Jellyfin library, but I’m keeping the physical copies of these movies along with multiple backups. Even physical media doesn’t last forever, but these are movies that definitely deserve the extra insurance.

Don’t expect your favorite movies to stay on streaming services

If there are movies you really love, don’t rely on streaming services as the only way you can watch them. I still use streaming services to watch movies all the time, but some movies are too good to risk losing access to.

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Steven Bartlett started ‘The Diary of a CEO’ with a $100 microphone. Now he says it’s on track for $60 million in annual revenue

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Steven Bartlett started his podcast with just a laptop and a sock pulled over a $100 microphone. Before there were guests, it was just Bartlett, reading from his diary at 2 a.m. and trying to make sense of what he had written that week. He eventually began interviewing other people about theirs. Now, The Diary of a CEO is one of the world’s biggest podcasts, and is on track to overtake Joe Rogan as the most-subscribed podcast on YouTube.

The show has grown into a business Bartlett forecasts will generate about $60 million in revenue this year. But growing it has also meant turning down money—including a deal that would have required more advertising and taking the show off YouTube. He described the proposed arrangement as a trade: accept a large payment, put 12 advertisements in the podcast, and have little say over those ads.

“One of the central reasons why I turned down such an offer is because that is four times more ads than I have to put in now,” Bartlett told Fortune’s Ellie Austin on Fortune Daily.

Working with what he calls “fragmentation vultures”—companies seeking exclusive podcast distribution deals—can mean sacrificing revenue or control over the relationship with an audience, Bartlett argued. Instead, he sees the relationship with his audience as worth protecting, even when a lucrative offer like that comes along. The business he aims to preserve already makes money beyond advertising: through products, subscriptions, and events.

news Beyond the podcast ad

Bartlett, who dropped out of college to pursue entrepreneurship, launched The Diary of a CEO in 2017 by turning his own diary entries into podcast episodes. He later began interviewing other people about their own diaries, finding it more intellectually stimulating to learn about their own lives than to read about his own

Those conversations explored his guests’ motivations, insecurities, and ambitions, eventually broadening the show’s scope to subjects ranging from neuroscience and psychology to performance and sports.

And with it, the business has expanded too. When asked where the show’s projected $60 million comes from, Bartlett pointed to brand partnerships, products his business owns and manufactures, subscriptions, memberships, and events. On top of that, he runs an investment fund.

“It’s a wide range of things and again, this goes to the point of diversification,” he said.

Steven.com, Bartlett’s holding company, houses the podcast and his other creator businesses. It also includes other creators, helping them build media brands and develop products and ventures.  Bartlett forecasts about $90 million in revenue for his broader media company this year, including the projected $60 million from The Diary of a CEO.

He also put next year’s holding-company forecast at about $160 million. But he’s not the only person to see nine-figure valuations as a result of the podcasting business:  “Call Her Daddy” podcast host Alex Cooper’s holding company Unwell raised investment at a $500 million valuation in August.

Bartlett sees that evolution as part of a wider shift of how creators work with brands. Early in his career, he said companies treated influencers like billboards: pay them, and they would post something. Then came the creative-director titles, equity arrangements, and opportunities to co-found businesses. Most evident with Sydney Sweeney, who became an equity partner and creative director at sports prediction market Novig, shaping its advertising rather than just simply appearing in it.

He believes the next stage involves creator businesses making acquisitions and operating more like large holding companies.

“You’re no longer an influencer, you’re no longer an equity partner, a creative director,” he said. “You are an owner or co-founder.”

news The business of audience trust

Distribution has become a point of negotiation across podcasting, perhaps most famously in 2024, when Spotify ended Rogan’s exclusivity and allowed his show to stream on rival platforms. Bartlett prefers fewer partnerships, and only with businesses that matter to him personally. About 70% of his podcast partners, he said, are companies whose founders he approached himself.

Choosing sponsors is only one part of maintaining audience trust—what guests say on the podcast matters too. On Fortune Daily, he was questioned about a 2024 BBC investigation into health claims made on his show. He said his team had contracted a full-time medical PhD to review health episodes, adding context on screen and removing material that could not adequately be contextualized. Now, an independent review team fact-checks every episode—not just those focused on health—before it is published.

When asked whether an unsupported scientific statement would be removed from the audio, he said the decision depends on its framing: a definitive claim would be treated differently from a guest discussing a hypothesis based on early research.

But despite his growing influence, Bartlett doesn’t consider himself a journalist. He described his interviews as an exercise in pursuing his own curiosity, whether he’s sitting across from Kamala Harris or JD Vance. Viewers will always have questions they wish he had asked, he said, but he believes his approach needs to remain anchored in that curiosity.

“If you’re not anchored to, like, your own curiosity, you’re going to be a plastic bag in the wind,” he said.

As the business continues to grow, Bartlett’s advice to other creators is to think beyond the next deal—while acknowledging that his own success gives him more freedom to choose.

“If you want to build a durable business in this creator economy, you have to prioritize sovereignty,” he said. “You’re renting your audience at the moment.”

Goldman sees a housing freeze through 2027. It would lock in an economic divide between millennials

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More than 95% of American mortgage borrowers pay less than today’s market rate, and 65% pay at least 2 percentage points less, a legacy of the mass refinancing of 2020 and 2021, when rates hit record lows. In a note published Monday, Goldman Sachs economists say that gap will keep the housing market stuck through 2027, with just 3.9 million existing-home sales, 26% below 2019 levels. The note does not mention millennials, but its findings bear on the split inside that generation.

The main reason for the diagnosis by Goldman economist Ronnie Walker is “lock-in.” Moving would mean giving up a cheap loan for an expensive one.

Goldman’s strategists expect mortgage rates to fall to 6.4% by the end of 2027. Even so, the note says affordability will stay at historically poor levels. Rates have climbed another 140 basis points since their February trough, to roughly 7.4%. That pushes even more borrowers below the market rate and raises the bar for anyone who still needs a loan.

news Two millennial generations

The data show millennials have already split. A Minneapolis Fed study, as reported by Fortune in July, found that homeownership among adults under 35 is far lower than the standard measure suggests: 22% when every adult is counted, versus 37% when only household heads are.

National Association of Realtors (NAR) data show where the line runs. In NAR’s 2026 generational report, the overall first-time buyer share fell to a record-low 21%. Among younger millennials who bought homes, ages 27 to 35, the first-time share fell from 71% to 60% in a year. Older millennials, ages 36 to 45, are now the highest-earning buyers, with a median household income of $132,700 in 2024. Only a third of older millennial buyers were first-time buyers; NAR says older millennials “are leveraging equity to become move-up buyers.”

Millennials’ total net worth rose from $3.94 trillion in 2019 to $15.95 trillion five years later, according to Federal Reserve data. Their housing wealth grew about $2.5 trillion between 2020 and 2024, even after accounting for new mortgage debt, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Those gains went mostly to people who bought early. Younger millennials are also more likely to carry student debt: 39% do, with a median balance of $30,000, against 27% of older millennials, according to NAR.

“The housing market remains sharply divided between homeowners with equity and first-time buyers trying to break in,” NAR deputy chief economist Jessica Lautz said in April. Speaking to Fortune, she put it more bluntly: “It becomes a renter versus an owner economic scenario.”

news Why 2027 matters

Goldman’s weak price forecast cuts both ways. It expects prices to rise 0.8% in 2027, after 1.1% in 2026 and 1.2% in 2025, against a historical average of roughly 5%. Flat prices mean the equity windfall that lifted early buyers is mostly over. They also offer buyers little price relief, because the cost of borrowing is the barrier.

Goldman sees some supply easing. It expects the homeowner vacancy rate to rise from 1.2% to 1.4% by the end of 2027, and it expects lock-in to fade gradually after that. It also cites weaker demand, with purchase-intention surveys falling sharply and reduced immigration slowing household formation.

The upshot is a market where people who already own can stay put on cheap loans. People who don’t yet own face high rates, little for sale and no sign that prices will fall enough to compensate. Erik Hembre, the Minneapolis Fed’s lead author, cautioned against too much doom. “It’s still true that most people, a majority of people, become homeowners at some point,” he said, though the data suggest “some point” is arriving later.

A house has always come before the next steps, and those are sliding too. The median first-time homebuyer is now 40, the oldest on record, according to NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers.

Parenthood is following the same curve. The U.S. total fertility rate fell to a record low of about 1.6 births per woman in 2024, down 23% since 2008, according to final CDC data released in June. Birth rates for women in their early and late 20s hit record lows, while the rate for women 40 to 44 reached its highest level since 1965. The average first-time mother is now a record 27.6 years old, up from 21.4 in 1970, according to an analysis of federal data by Bowling Green State University’s National Center for Family & Marriage Research.

Economists have tied those timelines together. A November 2025 working paper by Benjamin Couillard, an economics doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto, estimates that rising housing costs account for 51% of the drop in the U.S. fertility rate between the 2000s and 2010s. An earlier 2014 paper in the Journal of Public Economics by Lisa Dettling and Melissa Kearney found that rising house prices lead to more births among homeowners and fewer among people who don’t own. By their estimate, a $10,000 rise in home prices raises fertility 5% among owners and lowers it 2.4% among non-owners

news One generation, two balance sheets

The longer consequence may be what the freeze does to the idea of a millennial generation at all. Wealth inside the cohort was already splitting faster than it did for the boomers. A 2023 study in the American Journal of Sociology tracked about 12,000 Americans born in 1957–64 or 1980–84 and found that wealth inequality “is much more pronounced among Millennials than it was for Boomers.” By 35, 49% of early millennials owned a home, against 62% of late boomers at the same age. About 14% of early millennials had negative net worth, against 8.7% of boomers.

Timing compounds. Urban Institute researchers Jung Hyun Choi and Laurie Goodman found that people who bought their first home at 25 to 34 held median home equity of close to $150,000 by their early 60s. Those who waited until 45 or older ended up with more than $100,000 less.

Then comes the inheritance. Cerulli Associates projects that $105 trillion will pass to heirs through 2048, with millennials inheriting more than any other generation: $46 trillion. Over half of all transfers, about $62 trillion, will come from the 2% of households that are high-net-worth or ultra-high-net-worth. Children of homeowners are already 7 to 8 percentage points more likely to own than children of renters, Choi’s research found. The great wealth transfer will therefore flow along the same line Goldman’s lock-in draws, toward the millennials whose parents owned.

For marketers, pollsters and policymakers, “millennial” is starting to describe a birth year more than a balance sheet. The generation needs new names. Perhaps it will come from Goldman’s jargon: the Locked-In and the Locked-Out, or it could be Generation 3% and Generation 7%, after their mortgage rates. Perhaps they will be Generation Refi and Generation Rent. Stay tuned until after 2027, at least.

Generative AI was used for research assistance and/or transcription of this article. The reporter independently reported and verified the factual claims in this article, and a human editor reviewed it before publication.

As Stelco reports soaring earnings, how solid is their layoff legal case?

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U.S.-based Cleveland-Cliffs said on Monday that it saw its strongest quarterly financial results since the year before acquiring Stelco in 2024.

This comes as Stelco continues to lay off hundreds of workers at its steel plant in Hamilton, Ont., while citing pressure from U.S. tariffs, a decision the federal government says breaches its binding agreement to maintain jobs.

Cleveland-Cliffs said it saw net earnings of US$612 million in the third quarter, up from $286 million in the previous quarter.

Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves in the report said, “Third quarter was our strongest quarter in three years,” and added that the figure was higher than the $575 million guidance they provided three months earlier.

On Tuesday, Industry Minister Mélanie Joly spoke outside the House of Commons.

“We took good note of the earnings call that happened yesterday where the CEO of Stelco again mentioned that he was in favour of American tariffs against steelworkers in Canada and therefore we’ve hired the best lawyers to advise us on what to do next,” said Joly.

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“I’ll have more to say in the coming days, but we’re following this very closely. We’ve been working also with the union as they’re providing important proof for a legal case.”

Several legal experts say that, based on publicly available information, the federal government could have a strong case.

“If they have the ability to sue, they should get on with it and at least do something about it so the workers aren’t living in financial emotional paralysis,” says employment lawyer and senior partner Howard Levitt of Levitt LLP.

“The federal government’s case, from everything we’ve heard, is rock solid and they should be seeking injunctive relief against the layoffs entirely and recalling the workers.”

Stelco announced last month that pressure from U.S. tariffs forced it to concentrate steel production at its Lake Erie Works plant in Haldimand, Ont., and halt production at its plant in Hamilton. Although the company said some of those workers would be offered positions at the Haldimand facility, hundreds are still expected to be out of work.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs include a 50 per cent duty on various Canadian steel products, and Stelco claims that has severely impacted its sales.

Here’s how the two arguments stack up, according to legal experts.

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Ottawa’s potential case against Stelco

When Cleveland-Cliffs acquired Stelco in 2024, the federal government approved the deal under the Investment Canada Act. The full legally binding agreement has not been made public, although a summary of its terms was released in 2024.

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According to the summary, the agreement with Cleveland-Cliffs includes a commitment “To continue to employ at least the same number of unionized employees and the vast majority of non-unionized employees as were employed when the transaction was announced.”

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The federal government’s stance is that by using tariffs to justify laying off workers, Stelco and Cleveland-Cliffs breached the agreement.

“From what they have said publicly, from what everyone has said publicly they have a very good case […] if that’s the agreement that was made,” says Levitt.

“But again, it’s based on what we’ve heard and I’m surprised the federal government has not released the actual documents. But I’m also surprised, if the owner of Stelco has a real good defence, that they haven’t released the actual documents.”

Joly sent Stelco’s president a letter on Oct. 5 demanding the company outline how it plans to abide by its commitments, including preserving jobs.

In addition, Joly said last week that Goncalves has been a vocal supporter of U.S. tariffs on steel, and therefore the company cannot use tariffs as an excuse for layoffs.

“He’s in favor of these U.S. tariffs against steel,” she said to reporters on Oct. 7.

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“They cannot say that this is now an act of God or force majeure.”

Employment lawyer Christopher Achkar, managing partner at Achkar Law, says that in this context, Stelco using tariffs as an excuse for layoffs amounts to trying to “have your cake and eat it too.”

“You can’t say that you are in favor of something, and then when it actually happens, say, ‘oh, it is out of my hands,’ — you are the one who was in favor of that,” he says.

“I think Stelco’s positions from a practical standpoint are quite weak.”

Further, Achkar says that Stelco would likely have a tough time arguing that tariffs forced it to lay off workers, when it also refused financial assistance from the federal government to mitigate those risks.

Stelco’s case

Stelco’s president, Paul Simon, responded to Joly’s letter on Oct. 9.

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The seven-page response detailed the company’s stance, and said the federal government’s accusations are “false.”

“Stelco submitted its annual report confirming its compliance with the employment undertakings in November 2025. That report highlighted that Stelco was facing significant challenges due to the unforeseen consequences stemming from unprecedented U.S. tariffs and Canada’s failure to advance an effective ‘Fortress North America’ trade regime,” the letter said.

“Your representation that Stelco’s planned layoffs cause it to breach its undertakings is false as the undertakings do not stipulate a commitment to avoid layoffs.”

The company is describing the cuts as indefinite layoffs, while the union is treating them as temporary under its collective agreement, which Levitt says is a key detail.

“You can lay off some without paying them anything, as long as you maintain benefits for 35 weeks, if it’s a temporary layoff. But Stelco announced this is an ‘indefinite’ layoff — in my mind, that’s a termination, not a layoff.”

The letter also says its exports of cold-rolled and coated steel to the United States have plunged 58 per cent from pre-trade-war levels as foreign imports continue to undercut Canadian-made steel.

Achkar says the wording in the letter suggests Stelco may seek to argue its case based on a technicality.

“Their argument is going to be that they are still technically employees and the headcount is still technically the same,” he says.

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Achkar also explains that the Investment Canada Act stipulates to avoid terminating workers, while these tariff-related layoffs are considered by the company to be temporary measures until market conditions improve.

“Stelco is saying that a layoff doesn’t mean that they’re no longer an employee, and if our undertaking says that we are going to maintain the same headcount, the question is, is it staying the same with a temporary layoff?”

“Someone who’s temporarily laid off for 13 weeks, for example, is not getting paid at all for that period. So the spirit of the Act would be to have them fully employed and actually receiving wages, but the technicality about it is that they potentially could be viewed as still employees while being laid off.”

Ultimately, Achkar expects the case will not go to the Supreme Court because Stelco’s case may not be strong enough to justify it. Instead, he believes the case will likely wind up being a negotiated settlement.

“They are in breach, whether they can justify the breach may fall on a technicality. My estimation of it is it would probably be a weak one and will not succeed,” he says.

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Where things stand now

After she confirmed receipt of the letter from Stelco over the Thanksgiving long weekend, Joly was asked by reporters on Oct. 14 if she still believes the case will go to court.

“We expect Stelco to follow the undertakings that they’ve committed to, to the Government of Canada, and right now, a business decision or even a change in market conditions cannot be used to not follow the commitment. So we’re reviewing the Stelco letter,” Joly said.

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“A few possible outcomes of a court process can lead to financial penalties towards a company, forcing them to abide by the commitment, and also a forced divestiture, so forcing them to sell their Canadian assets. Everything is on the table.”

She added: “I’m always open to sit down with the company and find a solution, but we’re looking at everything that is possible to keep jobs in Canada.”

The end of the beginning: Alberta’s real referendum message for Carney

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On Monday, Albertans voted in a provincewide referendum that could have important consequences for Canada’s future. But the question attracting the most attention may not be the one that matters most.
The tenth question asked Albertans whether they want to remain in Canada or take the next step toward separation. As of the time of writing, only a quarter of Alberta voters opted for another referendum. Three-quarters opted against another referendum and said they wanted to remain in Canada.

But results from the other nine questions may tell a more interesting story.  All but Question 10 garnered majority support. Ipsos polling for Global News also found that Canadians outside Alberta supported eight of the nine proposals by majority. Albertans may have rejected separation for now, but they also endorsed an agenda for changing Canada that has considerable support elsewhere in the country.

Prime Minister Mark Carney seems to understand the message he received. At a rally in Calgary on October 15, he urged Albertans to reject the other nine questions with the slogan “No to the Nine.” Carney wasn’t simply campaigning against separation. He was taking a position against proposals that could reshape our country.

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The remaining nine questions cover two broad areas. The first five concern immigration and access to public services. They propose greater provincial control over immigration, lower immigration levels, employment preferences and restrictions on access to publicly funded services for temporary residents. They also address proof of citizenship for provincial voting.

The other four concern the federal system itself. They propose provincial control over appointments to superior courts, abolition of the Senate, the right to opt out of federal programs without losing funding and provincial laws taking precedence over federal laws in areas of provincial or shared jurisdiction.

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Some proposals would require constitutional changes. Others could be addressed through existing legislation. None automatically becomes law even though Albertans voted for them. But majority support has given Premier Danielle Smith justification to pursue them.

Quebec’s recent election adds another layer. Voters there have just elected a sovereigntist Parti Québécois government. Alberta and Quebec have different objectives, but both could find common cause in demanding greater provincial autonomy. Ottawa could soon face demands from two provinces with very different motivations seeking fundamental changes to Confederation.

For the past year, Donald Trump’s trade war against Canada has dominated Canadian politics. The threat from Washington has encouraged Canadians to rally around the flag. But national unity in the face of an external threat hasn’t eliminated the disagreements within Canada.

One of the most persistent has been the conflict between Alberta and Ottawa. It intensified during the Trudeau years, particularly over energy and environmental policy. For many Albertans, the dispute became a question of whether Ottawa was treating their province fairly.

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Carney has tried to change that relationship. His support for a new pipeline to tidewater represents a significant departure from the direction many Albertans associated with the previous Liberal government. But a pipeline remains a promise until it is built. Alberta’s demands for greater provincial autonomy extend well beyond energy.

A poll can show support for a proposal, but it doesn’t reflect support for the negotiations required to make it happen. Canadians may like abolishing the Senate without agreeing on what should replace it. They may favour greater provincial autonomy without wanting to reopen the Constitution.

But dismissing these results would miss the point. The public opinion exists, and it isn’t confined to Alberta. What’s missing is a political agenda capable of bringing these attitudes together. Monday’s referendum could be a step in that direction.
This creates a dilemma for Carney. Albertans rejected separation, so he can rightfully celebrate a victory for Canadian unity. But they endorsed eight of the other questions, which means he could face a disruptive provincial government with a renewed mandate to challenge Ottawa on issues that resonate across the country. And with an ally in Quebec’s sovereigntist government in Quebec.

Given our Prime Minister’s apparent fondness for seeing his current assignment in Churchillian terms, it seems appropriate to borrow a line from the man himself. Following the British victory at El Alamein in 1942, Churchill observed that it was not the beginning of the end, but perhaps the end of the beginning.

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The Alberta referendum could mark a similar turning point in the debate over Canada’s future. Is it the beginning of the end of Alberta’s confrontation with Ottawa, or merely the end of the beginning of a much broader debate about how Canada should work?

That remains to be seen. But Canadians would make a serious mistake if we confuse this vote against separation with acceptance of the status quo. On the contrary. The message from Albertans is that their grievances are real, and there remain nine questions in search of a meaningful response.

Americans warned about Paris travel after violence, looting and tear gas-filled streets

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The U.S. Embassy in France is warning Americans to steer clear of violent protests as unrest sparked curfews and raised concerns about travel disruptions across the country.

The riots — fueled by a range of grievances, including rising living costs and mass migration — have been reported across France, with protests reported in cities including Paris, Lille and Lyon. Authorities have imposed localized curfews as a result.

The embassy said in a Monday statement that partial curfews had been introduced in several French cities, with additional restrictions possible.

MCDONALD’S RANSACKED AND WRECKED AS STORES, RESTAURANTS SUFFER FROM VIOLENCE AND RIOTING

“Following the October 17 protests that turned violent, media report the Prime Minister’s office introduced partial curfews for Monday, October 19 and Tuesday, October 20 in several cities across France, including Lille,” the embassy said.

“Media report more curfews may follow for parts of Paris and in prefectures across the country, and that scattered protests could continue.”

trending topics A fire is seen with the Eiffel Tower in the background during a demonstration to protest against the

Riots across France have prompted localized curfews and travel warnings, with American tourists urged to avoid demonstrations and monitor transportation disruptions. (Guillaume Saligot/AFP/Getty Images)

In Paris, authorities also imposed overnight curfews in areas including Place de la République and the Les Halles Shopping District, according to The Associated Press (AP).

Riot police deployed tear gas across the streets near Place de la République in an attempt to disperse crowds during the escalating street battles, the same source reported.

ANGRY LOCALS BLOCK FAMOUS BEACH AS MASS TOURISM PROTESTS ESCALATE AT VACATION HOT SPOT

The gas quickly mixed with heavy, acrid smoke from torched vehicles and street fires, according to Reuters.

The chaos forced Dutch entrepreneur Tije De Boer, who was visiting Paris with his children, to evacuate his hotel at Place de la République.

“It’s like a war zone here.”

De Boer described the scene to Reuters as “like a war zone” following the intense protests that rocked the French capital on Oct. 17.

“It’s like a war zone here,” De Boer said, according to the Reuters report.

TOP TOURIST DESTINATION IN THE WORLD SHUTS DOWN AMID VIOLENT PROTESTS

Major tourist attractions have also been impacted.

The Louvre Museum in Paris was forced to close Monday after protesters blocked its entrances, Fox News Digital previously reported.

trending topics A protester watches a fire burn at a demonstration in Paris, France, on Saturday, Oct. 17, 2026. Rioters attacked French public buildings and looted stores in cities including Paris as protests against the high cost of living drew more than half a million people, underscoring the nation's challenges ahead of presidential elections next year

Demonstrations over rising living costs and other grievances have sparked unrest across France, prompting authorities to impose curfews in several cities. (Nathan Laine/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Travelers visiting Paris are being advised to avoid popular protest gathering spots, including Place de la République, Place de la Bastille and Place de la Nation, along with major thoroughfares such as Boulevard Voltaire, which are frequently used for demonstrations, according to The Times of London.

Outside the capital, Lyon’s tourism office at Place Bellecour was vandalized and set ablaze during the Oct. 17 demonstrations, according to city officials.

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Visitor services have since been relocated to a temporary facility on the same square.

The violence also spread to other French cities, including Limoges, where the historic town hall was set ablaze during the Oct. 17 unrest, according to numerous reports.

trending topics Protesters block the Louvre Museum entrances in Paris, France.

The Louvre, one of the world’s most visited and prominent museums, closed its doors on Monday as turmoil swept across Paris. Visitors who were turned away are pictured here on Oct. 19. (Anadolu via Getty Images)

In Bordeaux, the mayor reported that as many as 100 stores had been looted during the demonstrations, Reuters reported.

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Despite the violence, flights to and from Paris have largely continued operating, according to flight data reviewed by Fox News Digital.

However, travelers could still face disruptions on the ground, with the embassy advising Americans to check for Metro station closures and other transportation interruptions before heading out.

The embassy also urged travelers to confirm flight schedules directly with their airlines and allow extra time to reach their destinations.

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“Monitor media and local resources for updated information and curfews in your area,” the statement added. “Plan alternative routes and allow extra travel time for travel.”

trending topics During the demonstration on 17 October in Limoges protesters set fire to the town hall in Limoges Haute-Vienne in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region of France on 17 October 2026. (Photo by Elise Cabane / Hans Lucas / AFP via Getty Images)

The historic town hall in Limoges, France, was set ablaze during violent protests on Oct. 17 as unrest spread across several French cities, according to Reuters. (Elise Cabane / Hans Lucas / AFP via Getty Images)

Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department for comment.

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Fox News Digital’s Jessica Mekles and Reuters contributed reporting.

Rays star Freddy Peralta achieves historic pitching feat only accomplished twice since 1913

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When you do something on the baseball field that’s only been done twice in nearly 114 years by two Hall of Famers, you know it’s extraordinary.

Tampa Bay Rays star and ALCS MVP Freddy Peralta has been lights out down the stretch. In his last 10 starts dating back to the regular season, he has pitched more than 50 innings, allowed one run or fewer in each start, and his team has won all 10 games, according to Opta STATS.

The only two other pitchers to have such streaks were St. Louis Cardinals legend Bob Gibson in 1968 and Walter Johnson in 1913 with the Washington Nationals. However, Johnson’s Nationals are not today’s Nationals. The franchise later became known as the Washington Senators before moving to Minnesota and becoming the Twins in 1961.

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information hub Freddy Peralta celebrates after the Rays' win against the Guardians.

Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Freddy Peralta celebrates after their win against the Cleveland Guardians in Game 6 of the American League Championship Series in St. Petersburg, Fla., on Monday, Oct. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

When the Rays acquired Peralta from the New York Mets at the trade deadline, he had a 4.99 ERA in 22 starts. While they expected him to improve, no one could have expected this.

“This is crazy,” Peralta said. “I’m very happy to be here and grateful to be here because when I was in July, I had no idea where I was going to be. I think that this was the right place.”

Since joining the Rays, the 30-year-old went 5-2 in 10 regular-season starts with a 3.25 ERA and was named the American League’s Pitcher of the Month for September. In the postseason, he has been especially dominant. In four appearances (three starts), Peralta has a sparkling 1.08 ERA in 16 2/3 innings pitched.

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Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Freddy Peralta celebrates after the top of the fourth inning against the Cleveland Guardians in Game 6 of the American League Championship Series in St. Petersburg, Fla., on Monday, Oct. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Nicknamed “Fastball Freddy” for his heater, Peralta credited Rays pitching coach Kyle Snyder, along with bullpen coach Jorge Moncada and bullpen catcher Charlie Valerio, for his turnaround.

“They helped me a lot,” Peralta said. “I can’t thank them enough because the way that they helped me is amazing, something I’m never going to forget in life. I’m very grateful to have people like that here, people that I never saw before and now they are part of my family.”

While Peralta is on a roll, the World Series is going to be a little odd for him: He will face the Milwaukee Brewers, with whom he spent the first eight seasons of his career.

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information hub Freddy Peralta celebrates after the Rays' American League Championship Series win against the Guardians.

Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Freddy Peralta celebrates after their win against the Cleveland Guardians in Game 6 of the American League Championship Series in St. Petersburg, Fla., on Monday, Oct. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

“Milwaukee is a team and a city that gave me the opportunity to make my dream, and also Milwaukee is going to be always in my heart,” Peralta said. “But this is a time to compete … and excited to go.”

The right-hander is set to hit free agency this offseason and could earn a big payday. First, however, he is looking to take down his old team and help the Rays win their first World Series title.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Ryan Canfield is a digital production assistant for Fox News Digital.

Italy unleashes military response to violent riots as France faces a reckoning of its own

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Italy is moving to deploy 500 troops with expanded police powers following a weekend of violent riots, taking a more direct military approach to public security than France, where weeks of unrest have prompted authorities to bolster their security response.

Videos of unrest in France and Italy flooded social media on Saturday and Sunday, showing violent clashes between demonstrators and police amid burning buildings and looted storefronts. At multiple points during the chaos, police attempting to contain the violence were forced to retreat.

In Paris, for instance, roughly a dozen officers confronted several hundred demonstrators but were unable to make arrests, using rubber-bullet launchers and grenades to keep advancing rioters at bay as they made a gradual retreat. Italian police in Milan, meanwhile, made a similar retreat as hundreds of young rioters threw explosive firecrackers, metal barriers and glass bottles at them in their attempt to occupy a public square.

Though France is escalating its response now, demonstrations have been ongoing in the country since last month, with many schools being burned and ransacked by rioters.

MACRON JETS OUT OF RIOT-TORN FRANCE FOR GULF TRIP AS POLITICAL PRESSURE MOUNTS

general news Italian police clash with protesters in centre of Milan by the city's historic cathedral.

Italian police clash with protesters in centre of Milan by the city’s historic cathedral. (Reuters)

A Fox News Digital investigation found that socialist groups, Islamic advocacy organizations and environmental activists were involved in the French riots, which financial analysts estimate caused over $1 billion in damages. Videos from the unrest also showed demonstrators waving foreign flags, including Palestinian flags in France and an Albanian flag during the violence in Milan.

Italian media reported that many first and second-generation migrants were among the rioters in Milan.

WHO’S WHO: INSIDE FRANCE’S ‘CHAOS INC.’ FRANCHISE OF COMMUNIST GROUPS, LABOR UNIONS AND GLOBAL ACTIVISTS

general news Violent protestors in Milan

ITALY-POLITICS-PROTEST-SOCIAL-DEMO
A demonstrator kicks back a tear gas canister during clashes with police at an anti-government protest organized by the Italia in Piazza movement, at Piazza Duomo in Milan, on October 17, 2026. Inspired by recent protests in France and Spain, demonstrators are protesting against the rising cost of living, low wages, high rents and public service shortcomings, demanding better living and working conditions. (Photo by Piero CRUCIATTI / AFP via Getty Images)
(Piero Cruciatti/AFP via Getty Imges)

With another wave of riots planned for this coming weekend and authorities bracing for more violence, France and Italy are turning to their armed forces to reinforce security after days of rioting.

France’s gendarmes, essentially military police officers, assisted in containing last weekend’s riots. The nation’s interior minister announced on Tuesday that the military would be increasing its presence in anticipation of further rioting.

FRANCE’S MASSIVE INTEL FAILURE SPARKS RESIGNATION OFFERS AMID DAYS OF RIOTING

general news France Protests

Trash burns during clashes between protestors and police officers during a demonstration against rising living costs, joining students’ grievances, in Paris, Sunday, Oct. 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)

“We will ⁠deploy the Sentinelle force, ​obviously ‌as a substitute ‌to interior security ‌forces … mostly to free police and gendarmes in their mission to maintain order,” he ‌told France’s legislature.

France has upcoming presidential elections, with some political observers viewing the migrant-heavy riots as an electoral boon for Marine Le Pen, the most popular right-wing candidate.

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Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced a similar deployment, pledging that 500 troops will be entering Milan. The country’s deputy prime minister explained that the police would be granted police powers, providing some insight into the role they could play in squaring off against rioters.

The no-sleep issue is just another confusing part of the Jalen Hurts story

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Released October 20, 2026 01:08 PM

The lack of total details about the occasions that caused Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts taking a trip to London with an embolism in his leg, having fun with an embolism in his leg, and immediately taking a trip back to Philadelphia with an embolism in his leg has actually led to lots of reports focused on filling the spaces. The craziest of the reports emerged on Monday, when both Tom Pelissero of Netflix and Ian Rapoport of ESPNFL reported that physicians had actually encouraged Hurts to not sleep as a preventative measure.

That caused the claim from Pelissero that Hurts went without sleep for approximately 36 hours

A couple of hours later on, Pelissero (who was slammed for his framing of Hurts’s determination to use no sleep) wheeled a mop and bucket to Twitter and stated this: “Just spoke with Jalen Hurts’ representative, Nicole Lynn, who clarified that while Hurts was up till early Sunday early morning getting assessed at a healthcare facility, he had the ability to sleep upon rejoining the group and the Eagles reserved a space for him at the arena. Videos from the arena program Hurts coming onto the field prior to kickoff and he felt rested enough to play.”

The ESPN post was modified to include this paragraph: “Sources informed Rapoport that Hurts remained in the healthcare facility late night in London and upon going back to the hotel at 3:00 am regional time, he had the ability to sleep till the group left for the arena at 10:30 am. Upon arrival, Hurts took a snooze up until going out to the field for pregame warmups.”

In the course of the very same day, the reporting went from medical professionals informing Hurts not to sleep at all to Hurts ultimately sleeping up to 7.5 hours at the hotel AND napping at the arena.

None of it makes good sense, mostly since the Eagles have yet to make anybody readily available to address the concerns that the media and the general public have. Monday’s declaration from the group pointed out “openness,” the level of openness has actually been selective and insufficient. Just coach Nick Sirianni has actually talked to press reporters, and his function was always restricted.

If Hurts has no qualms about the issuance of declarations detailing his health circumstance, he definitely would not challenge the medical professional(s) who treated him discussing what occurred, when it took place, how it occurred, why it occurred.

It appears that both the Eagles and the NFL hope to run out the clock up until the next intense, glossy item catches the attention of our cumulative goldfish brain.

Ultimately, somebody will have the entire story. It would be much better if it came straight from individuals who were associated with a chain of choices that appears odd at best, hazardous at worst.

Still, that’s how it opts for the NFL and its groups. They desire attention from the general public on their terms. And they will attempt their damnedest to keep unpleasant realities concealed from outdoors analysis for as long as they can.

Regarding the press reporters who obviously have actually pulled back the reports that Hurts was recommended to not sleep without formally withdrawing them, there’s a story to be outlined why and how that took place. The most reasonable description is that they were encouraged by somebody from the Eagles into doing so, which they understood (or were advised) that the Eagles are among the groups that butter their bread when it concerns reporting deals 5 minutes before the relocations are revealed.

Pennsylvania warns of rise in congenital measles and infection during pregnancy

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The Pennsylvania Department of Health provided an alert Monday to medical professionals about a boost in measles infections in pregnant females, along with a worrying increase in hereditary measles– an illness that’s hardly ever, if ever, seen in the U.S. The department stated that 66 pregnant ladies in Pennsylvania had actually been detected with measles considering that the state’s break out started in April. “Getting measles while pregnant boosts the danger of miscarriage, early labor, and low birth weight,” a department representative stated in an e-mail. It’s uncertain the number of females have actually miscarried or provided infants with genetic measles. The department stated that state law restricts it from launching information of the results of those pregnancies, and there is no nationwide database that tracks cases. Real numbers might likewise be obscured as the break out has actually mainly been restricted to Amish households who do not constantly look for standard medical support.Since Thursday, there have actually been 4,410 measles cases in the U.S. this year. In Pennsylvaniathere have actually been 1,286 cases since Monday.Even before extensive measles vaccination, hereditary measles was unusual. That’s due to the fact that many ladies had actually currently been contaminated as kids. It’s just now becoming a danger as measles break outs are increasing as vaccination rates fall. Last month, the American Academy of Pediatrics included a “often asked concerns” page about genetic measles to its site in action to continuous and increasing measles break outs. According to the AAP, genetic measles happens in babies whose moms have actually been contaminated throughout the 2 weeks before birth and who evaluate favorable or establish measles signs within 10 days of shipment.Anecdotally, medical professionals have actually stated that a minimum of 6 infants were born in Pennsylvania with hereditary measles. Infants can have a series of signs, from a rash and fever to pneumonia, neurological issues and low blood platelets. A minimum of 2 established pneumonia and were confessed to an extensive care system, physicians stated.Hereditary measles can be fatal. One daddy in Lancaster County formerly informed NBC News that his better half was ill with measles in August and entered into labor a month early. Their infant passed away soon after birth. Genetic measles can likewise cause serious brain and body immune system concerns later on in life, the Pennsylvania Department of Health stated. Those long-lasting problems can consist of an extremely uncommon and serious inflammatory brain condition called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, or SSPE. It can take place 7 to 10 years after a measles infection and is usually deadly. There is proof that SSPE might take place previously in kids born with hereditary measles.There’s no particular treatment for hereditary measles aside from encouraging care, such as fluids, hydration and extra oxygen.The very best method to avoid the newborn condition is for females to get immunized before getting pregnant, the health department stated. Pregnant females who get measles are not able to get the vaccine due to the fact that the shot includes a weakened however live variation of the infection. Unvaccinated pregnant ladies who are exposed to measles can get a dosage of immunoglobulin within 6 days of that direct exposure, the health department stated, to “offer security versus measles infection or minimize the danger of severe health problem amongst vulnerable individuals.”The vaccine can be offered to females after they provide their infants and is safe for breastfeeding moms, according to state health authorities.

Genetic code expansion enables plant-directed control of bacterial activity

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Agricultural performance has actually increased drastically over the last century. The fertilizers, development regulators and pesticides that drove these gains are broadly acting and frequently used in excess, which has actually triggered prevalent waste and eco-friendly damage1,2Germs with the possible to provide plant-growth-promoting advantages straight to plants have actually become appealing options to chemical inputs3,4Bacteria might deal with comparable constraints to chemical inputs5,6,7Beneficial microbes can spread out beyond target crops, where they might provide development advantages that water down the competitive benefit planned for the crop and trigger unintentional eco-friendly modification8,9

Resolving this issue needs a system to limit microbial advantages to particular plant hosts and conditions. Previous efforts have actually checked out rhizopines10,11believes12sucrose13 and quorum-sensing particles14,15 as plant-produced signals to manage bacterial gene expression. Reliable under the contexts evaluated, the natural functions of these particles in interkingdom signaling might restrict their orthogonality in artificial signaling systems planned for sets of crafted organisms.

Noncanonical amino acids (ncAAs), which are amino acids outside the canonical translational collection, have prospective for broadening the tool kit. Plants naturally produce an approximated 250– 300 ncAAs16,17,18These ncAAs function as metabolic intermediates, safeguarded nitrogen tanks, allelopathic chemicals, signals for systemic gotten resistance and arbitrators of tension action16,17,18,19,20Nonnative ncAAs that are missing from natural plant chemical vocabularies might be integrated with hereditary code growth (GCE) innovations to program plant– bacterium interactions. GCE innovations now allow site-specific incorporation of more than 200 ncAAs into target proteins within living cells21,22which produces the chance to program bacterial gene expression in action to varied ncAAs.

Amongst the numerous ncAAs recognized to date, O-methyl-L-tyrosine (OMY) is well fit for plant-based control over microbial habits for a number of factors. OMY has actually not been found in farming soils and its recognized biosynthetic origins are restricted to marine Streptomyces spp. and the rice blast fungi Magnaporthe oryzaewhere it works as a biosynthetic precursor for marformycin23 and cytochalasan24respectively. Hence, OMY has a beneficial probability of operating as an orthogonal regulator of bacterial gene expression in farming soils. Second, OMY can be manufactured from L-tyrosine in a single enzymatic action by MfnG, an O-methyltransferase from Streptomyces drozdowiczii23which facilitates its production in heterologous hosts25Third, OMY was the very first ncAA to be site-specifically integrated within proteins in live bacterial cells26 and robust GCE equipment exists for OMY incorporation27,28It has actually been shown that OMY can moderate crafted interaction in between stress of Escherichia coli25

Here, we develop OMY as a tool for plant-based control over microbial habits. We show that the design soil germs Bacillus subtilis can integrate OMY into target proteins through GCE to allow OMY-dependent protein synthesis with a>> 3,000-fold dynamic variety. We reveal that OMY can be biosynthesized by numerous plant types, consisting of the design plant Arabidopsis thalianathe veggie crop Solanum lycopersicum (tomato) and the bioenergy tree Populus tremula × alba(poplar), through heterologous expression of a single biosynthetic enzyme. Plant-derived OMY suffices to manage bacterial protein synthesis in cocultivation experiments. We reveal that the system is generalizable throughout numerous target proteins and practical in a wild bacterial isolate with very little optimization.

Equating this tool into farming applications needs that OMY production does not jeopardize plant physical fitness. Relative to plant-produced ncAAs that work as allelopathic substances, such as meta-tyrosine29 and L-canavanine30OMY displays minimized phytotoxicity. We discover that OMY is ~ 50– 200-fold less powerful than recognized allelopathic ncAAs and is not misincorporated into native plant proteins like other allelopathic ncAAs16,17,18,19,29,31Conditional and tissue-specific production of OMY minimizes development effects while preserving efficient bacterial signaling. Completely, this work shows that ncAAs can be utilized to program plant– microbe interactions and lays a structure for accuracy farming applications based upon crafted microbial collaborations.

data-title=”Results”> ResultsGCE in B
subtilis

To develop germs efficient in an extremely delicate reaction to plant-produced OMY (Fig. 1a), we presented GCE elements intoB subtilis PY79( refs. 27,32. GCE needs an orthogonal aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase/tRNA set that can charge a suppressor tRNA with the ncAA to allow incorporation at amber stop codons in target genes. We presented the napARS synthetase originated from the Methanocaldococcus jannaschiityrosyl-tRNA synthetase (MjTyrRS) and its matching suppressor tRNA (tRNATyrCUA26 under the control of strong constitutive promoters into the B subtilis PY79 chromosome (Fig. 1b). To evaluate OMY-dependent protein production, we incorporated an mNeonGreen press reporter with an amber stop codon near the N terminus at the amyElocus on the B subtilischromosome. In the lack of OMY, mNeonGreen translation need to end at the stop codon, leading to a truncated protein without any press reporter activity. In the existence of OMY, napARS and tRNATyrCUA must assist in incorporation of OMY at UAG websites to produce a totally practical press reporter protein. Checking of the mNeonGreen press reporter by titrating exogenous OMY exposed dose-dependent press reporter activation, with twofold induction at 1 μM OMY, fivefold induction at 10 μM OMY and 20-fold induction at 1 mM OMY (Fig. 1c). We observed considerable background fluorescence in the lack of OMY, showing insufficient translational termination at the single amber stop codon.

Fig. 1: GCE for OMY-dependent protein synthesis in a design soil germs.

aOMY platform idea. Plants crafted to produce a ncAA can trigger particular bacterial activity. bGCE parts presented to B subtilisto make it possible for OMY-dependent gene expression. A crafted version of MjTyrRS26 and tRNATyrCUA26 were constitutively revealed by the pVeg73 and pSer27 promoters, respectively. The gene of interest( GOI) was crafted to have an in-frame amber stop codon, TAG, for site-specific ncAA incorporation and was revealed constitutively by a pHyperspank promoter74A chloramphenicol resistance cassette, CmR75and kanamycin resistance cassette, KanR76were utilized for choice of each construct upon genome combination and both were flanked by LoxP websites77 cActivity of an OMY-dependent mNeonGreen press reporter consisting of one amber stop codon in B subtilisPY79 throughout a variety of OMY concentrations in very little media. The rushed line represents OD-normalized fluorescence without any supplemented OMY. dActivity of NanoLuc press reporters consisting of absolutely no, a couple of amber stop codons inB subtilis PY79 with 0 µM (black) or 100 µM( purple) OMY supplements in abundant medium (POUND). eOMY-dependent surfactin production determined utilizing HPLC. Information are the mean of 3 duplicates gathered concurrently from 3 different cultures. Mistake bars represent the s.d. and dots are specific information points.

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To minimize background activity and enhance vibrant variety, we changed to the more delicate NanoLuc luciferase press reporter33 and checked the impact of including numerous amber stop codons. We built NanoLuc versions with one (position 2) or 2 (positions 2 and 4) amber stop codons and determined luminescence in the existence and lack of OMY. While all variations revealed comparable luminescence signals in the existence of OMY, background activity reduced considerably with the extra amber stop codon (Fig. 1d). The two-stop alternative showed almost 55-fold lower background than the single-stop construct, leading to an overall fold modification of 3,100-fold with and without OMY (Fig. 1d). This highlights how variation in amber stop codons can modify the stringency of OMY-dependent protein production for conditional gene expression applications.

An essential benefit of GCE is that bacterial output can be reprogrammed by presenting amber codons into any gene of interest without altering the tRNA/synthetase equipment. To show control over a microbially produced substance appropriate to plant development promo, we crafted OMY-dependent surfactin biosynthesis by presenting a copy of thesfpgene, which encodes the 4 ′- phosphopantetheinyl transferase enzyme accountable for triggering surfactin synthetases34consisting of an amber stop codon intoB subtilis chromosome. The crafted stress produced no noticeable surfactin in the lack of OMY and ~ 0.18 g L− 1 surfactin with 500 µM OMY (Fig. 1e). Together, these outcomes reveal that OMY-dependent translation can be utilized to securely manage expression of varied bacterial proteins.

Plant biosynthesis of OMY

Next, we crafted plants to produce OMY. We initially checked OMY production in plant cells utilizing short-term expression of GFP-tagged MfnG (sfGFP– MfnG) in Nicotiana benthamianaleaves (Fig. 2ab). We utilized the A thaliana UBQ10 promoter35 to drive expression of sfGFP– MfnG and Agrobacterium tumefaciensseepage to provide the construct into plant cells. At 3 days after seepage, leaves revealing the combination construct were collected for liquid chromatography– mass spectrometry (LC– MS) analysis. Extracts from proUBQ10:: sfGFP-MfnG leaf tissue included a metabolite with the anticipated m / zfor OMY and coeluted with an industrial OMY requirement, while no signal was identified in control samples (Fig. 2b and Extended Data Fig. 1a). Hence, OMY can be manufactured in plant cells by revealing MfnG.

Fig. 2: Heterologous MfnG expression allows OMY biosynthesis in planta and plant-directed control of bacterial gene expression.

aOMY biosynthetic path. bExtracted ion chromatograms at 196.097 m /zfrom LC– MS analysis of uninfiltrated N benthamianaleaves (top), N benthamiana leaves transiently changed with proUBQ10:: sfGFP-MfnG T-DNA( middle) and OMY requirement( bottom). Short-term expression was accomplished through Agrobacterium seepage( Methods ). csfGFP expression in homozygous proUBQ10:: sfGFP-MfnG seedlings 11 days after stratification. Widefield fluorescence microscopy( 500 ms of direct exposure; left) and composite brightfield images( right). Insets, fluorescence of main and lateral root ideas. Scale bar, 1 cm. dOMY in development medium conditioned by hydroponically growing wild-type Col-0( gray) and proUBQ10:: sfGFP-MfnG( magenta) Arabidopsisseedlings. OMY concentration was identified by peak strength at 196.097 m /zwithin a retention time variety of 4.855– 5.139 minutes (EICs in Extended Data Fig. 1b). Dots represent 3 technical reproduces from one batch of seedlings grown together, 18 seedlings per reproduce. Bar plots reveal the mean. Mistake bars represent the interquartile variety. WT, wild type. eCocultivation ofB subtilis PY79 revealing the OMY-dependent luciferase press reporter consisting of 2 amber stop codons with wild-type Col-0 (left) or proUBQ10:: sfGFP-MfnG (right)Arabidopsis seedlings. Seedlings were moved onto germs– agar matrix at 8 days after stratification and cocultivated for 4 days before imaging. Composite images overlay brightfield with luminescence (30 s of direct exposure). The color bar represents luminescence strength (Fire LUT) (extra images in Extended Data Fig. 2). Scale bar, 1 cm. fLuminescence strength profile throughout the xaxis of the plate in eThe line plot links discrete points representing the vertically balanced pixel strength at each place. gFold modification in luminescence strength, computed as the ratio of strength at each peak to the typical strength at surrounding midpoints in between peaks Bar plots reveal the average and interquartile variety for wild-type Col-0 (gray, n=7) and proUBQ10:: sfGFP-MfnG (magenta, n=8); private information points represent single peaks. Open circles are from the blended plate displayed in e; closed circles are from different wild-type and proUBQ10:: sfGFP-MfnG plates (Extended Data Fig. 2c). Analytical significance was examined utilizing a two-sided Mann– Whitney test (***P=0.0003).

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We then changedAthaliana Col-0 with proUBQ10:: sfGFP-MfnG utilizing flower dip to produce steady transgenic lines, assuming that biosynthesized OMY might be radiated due to the fact that tyrosine and numerous other amino acids are frequently discovered in root exudate36Transgenic plants displayed sfGFP expression in all tissues (Fig. 2c). To measure OMY exudation, we grew the plants hydroponically. We sprouted Arabidopsis seeds on strong medium and moved 18 6-day-old seedlings into 12 ml of liquid Murashige– Skoog basal salts medium supplemented with 1% sucrose. After 48 h of hydroponic development, we examined the conditioned medium utilizing LC– MS. The proUBQ10:: sfGFP-MfnG transgenic plants produced approximately 3.1 µM OMY, whereas no OMY was identified in wild-type controls (Fig. 2d and Extended Data Fig. 1b). Therefore, micromolar OMY concentrations can be accomplished wholesale root exudate without optimization of metabolic flux or OMY transportation and without L-tyrosine supplements.

Cocultivation of crafted plants and germs

To check whether plant-produced OMY might manage bacterial protein synthesis, we cocultivated OMY-producingArabidopsiswith B subtilis revealing OMY-dependent or OMY-independent NanoLuc press reporters. We embedded the germs in Murashige– Skoog agar medium and moved Arabidopsisseedlings onto the germs– agar matrix for cocultivation (Methods and Supplementary Fig. 1). After 4 days of cocultivation, we used luciferase substrate and imaged luminescence. The OMY-independent press reporter displayed strong luminescence throughout the whole plate no matter plant genotype, while OMY-dependent luciferase activity was just observed near sfGFP– MfnG-expressing plants (Fig. 2e and Extended Data Fig. 2a– c). Plants revealing proUBQ10:: sfGFP-MfnG produced strong luminescence peaks with the OMY-dependent press reporter (~ 3.2-fold above midpoint strength) (Fig. 2f, g and Extended Data Fig. 2c). We likewise observed little luminescence peaks. with the OMY-independent press reporter at each seedling (~ 1.2-fold above midpoint strength), recommending that bacterial density might increase near the roots and add to a regional boost in luminescence signal (Extended Data Fig. 2a). Wild-type plants cocultivated with the OMY-dependent stress revealed a comparable, 1.4-fold increase in luminescence at the root (Fig. 2f, g and Extended Data Fig. 2c). Excitingly, when OMY-producing transgenic plants were grown side by side with unmodified wild-type plants, the luminescence signal was focused around the transgenic plants (Fig. 2e– g). Therefore, plant-produced OMY allows genotype-specific induction of bacterial gene expression.

OMY impacts on plant and bacterial development

Some plant-produced ncAAs function as allelopathic substances that reduce the development of rival plants16,17,18,19,20We saw that transgenic plants everywhere revealing sfGFP– MfnG showed decreased main root length, reduced lateral root density and impaired gravitropism compared to wild-type Col-0 (Fig. 3a– d). These phenotypes corresponded throughout numerous independent homozygous lines, recommending that the development flaws arise from sfGFP– MfnG overexpression instead of random T-DNA insertion results (Extended Data Fig. 3a, b). Addition of OMY to bacterial development medium did not impact bacterial development rate (Extended Data Fig. 4a, b).

Fig. 3: Characterization of OMY toxicity in Arabidopsis

aRepresentative pictures of wild-type Col-0( left) and proUBQ10:: sfGFP-MfnG (right ) Arabidopsisseedlings 11 days after stratification. b—dPrimary root length( **** P

aActivity of an OMY-dependent mNeonGreen press reporter in B subtilis UD1022 throughout a series of OMY concentrations in very little medium.bActivity of NanoLuc press reporters including absolutely no, a couple of amber stop codons inB subtilisUD1022 with 0 µM (black)or 100 µM( purple )OMY supplements in abundant medium(POUND). Ina binformation are the mean of 3 duplicates gathered all at once from 3 different cultures; mistake bars represent the s.d. and dots are specific information points. cdRepresentative circulation cytometry pie charts of 10,000 occasions of UD1022 pressures harboring an OMY-independent mNeonGreen press reporter(green)or OMY-dependent mNeonGreen press reporter drawn out from autoclaved soil supplemented with 0 µM OMY (black) or 500 µM OMY (pink). Cells were drawn out from the soil 1 day (cor 3 days (dafter shot. eMedian fluorescence for the very same pressures and conditions asc dat 1 day and 3 days after shot for 3 reproduces. Mistake bars represent the s.d.fCocultivation ofB subtilis UD1022 revealing the OMY-dependent luciferase press reporter including 2 amber stop codons with wild-type Col-0 (top) or proUBQ10:: sfGFP-MfnG (bottom)Arabidopsisseedlings. Composite images overlay luminescence (10 s of direct exposure) and brightfield. Seedlings were moved to the germs– agar matrix at 10 days after stratification and cocultivated for 4 days. The color bar represents the luminescence strength (Fire LUT) (extra images in Extended Data Fig. 6). Scale bars, 1 cm.

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To check OMY-dependent gene expression in a more field-relevant environment, we inoculated autoclaved soil with the UD1022 mNeonGreen (1UAG) press reporter stress and supplemented the soil with 500 μM OMY (Extended Data Fig. 6a). After 1– 3 days, we measured mNeonGreen expression by cleaning the soil with PBS, removing soil particles and measuring fluorescence by circulation cytometry. Average fluorescence increased 41-fold in between 0 μM and 500 μM OMY treatment on day 3, suggesting robust OMY incorporation in soil (Fig. 5c– e).

Next, we evaluated whether plant-produced OMY might trigger the UD1022 press reporter in soil. We grew proUBQ10:: sfGFP-MfnG or wild-type seedlings in autoclaved soil for 11 days and after that inoculated the soil with UD1022 revealing the OMY-dependent mNeonGreen press reporter. After 3 days of cocultivation, we drew out germs for circulation cytometry analysis. Germs consisting of the OMY-dependent mNeonGreen press reporter revealed raised typical fluorescence (802 a.f.u.) when cocultivated with proUBQ10:: sfGFP-MfnG plants compared to wild-type controls (530 a.f.u.). The overall fluorescent population likewise increased from 9.8% to 36.1%, showing plant-to-microorganism OMY transfer in soil (Extended Data Fig. 6b– d).

To imagine spatial patterns of bacterial activity, we cocultivated UD1022 revealing the OMY-dependent NanoLuc press reporter with proUBQ10:: sfGFP-MfnGArabidopsis on agar. UD1022 showed luminescence patterns comparable to PY79, with signal brightest at the root ideas regardless of common MfnG expression (Fig. 5f and Extended Data Fig. 7). The root suggestion signal was more noticable with UD1022, which might show its higher capability to utilize root exudates for development. These outcomes show that OMY-mediated control encompasses wild soil germs with very little optimization and functions in both agar and soil environments.

Presenting OMY production to crop types

To show farming applicability, we extended OMY biosynthesis to tomato (S lycopersicum cv. Heinz 1706 (ref.42) and poplar ( P tremula × alba INRA 717-1B4 (ref.43 ). Due to the fact that producing steady transgenics in these types is time consuming, we utilized Rhizobium rhizogenes -moderated hairy root change for quick evidence of principle. In this procedure, R rhizogenes transfers T-DNA into plant cells at injury websites, activating the development of transgenic adventitious roots44(Fig. 6a). The resulting composite plants include wild-type shoots and a mix of transgenic hairy roots and nontransgenic roots emerging from the shoot45(Extended Data Fig. 8).

Fig. 6: OMY biosynthesis in tomato and poplar drives genotype-specific bacterial press reporter expression.

aHairy root improvement approach for tomato composite plants. Roots were gotten rid of from 8-day-old seedlings and inoculated withR rhizogenes bring the genes of interest. Rrhizogenes transfers its T-DNA into tomato cells, which causes hairy root development and produces composite plants with wild-type shoots and a mix of transgenic (magenta )and nontransgenic( gray) roots. bCocultivation of composite tomato( top) and poplar( bottom) plants with B subtilisPY79 revealing an OMY-dependent luciferase press reporter. Composite images overlay luminescence( 30 s of direct exposure) and brightfield. Images were gathered after 5 days (tomato) and 4 days (poplar) of cocultivation with germs. The color bar represents luminescence strength( Fire LUT). Scale bars, 1 cm.

Source information

We changed tomato seedlings and poplar explants with proUBQ10:: mStaygold-MfnG constructs( Extended Data Fig. 8). Cocultivation of composite plants with PY79 revealing the OMY-dependent NanoLuc press reporter for 4– 5 days led to luminescence localized to fluorescent-marker-expressing transgenic roots in both types (Fig. 6b). These outcomes show that OMY biosynthesis and bacterial control are extensible to agriculturally pertinent crop types.

Discussion

Our work develops the ncAA OMY as a tool for plant-based control of microbial activity. By integrating OMY biosynthesis in plants with bacterial GCE, we empower plants to direct bacterial gene expression. The system runs with high uniqueness, which shows up in cocultivation experiments where the luminescence signal from crafted germs focuses around transgenic plants growing along with wild-type next-door neighbors. We discovered that OMY shows moderate phytotoxicity, this takes place through a system unique from recognized allelopathic ncAAs29,30and conditional OMY biosynthesis can ameliorate physical fitness expenses while preserving bacterial control. Future work can check out extra hypotheses for OMY toxicity, consisting of competitive inhibition of fragrant amino acid transporters and biosynthetic enzymes46 disturbance with auxin biosynthesis or signaling (constant with impaired root gravitropism)47and disturbance with gibberellic acid biosynthesis or signaling (constant with lowered germination)48in addition to techniques for amelioration.

Future work can likewise enhance the system for farming soils, where resident germs and ecological variations might deteriorate OMY, impact incorporation and make it hard for crafted pressures to contend in the rhizosphere. Greater ncAA level of sensitivity, accomplished through engineering of the aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase/tRNA set for higher translation effectiveness at low ncAA concentrations49might make signifying more robust to these variations without needing phytotoxic levels of OMY production. Engineering natural field isolates might assist to deal with colonization and competitors obstacles. We discovered that the optimum fold modification needed various amber codon setups in PY79 and UD1022. This might show variation in amber suppression effectiveness27,50,51background translational termination fidelity52,53or ncAA transportation and schedule 54,55in between pressures. Therefore, field implementation might need optimization of the orthogonal translation system and the amber codon number in each bacterial stress with plant hosts in the target environment. Checking this system in nonsterile soils with varied native microbial neighborhoods will likewise be necessary for examining prospective off-target results and verifying that OMY-based signaling stays particular to crafted stress in complex, multispecies environments.

Remarkably, bulk measurements of OMY did not show the level of press reporter activation at plant roots in cocultivation experiments. This is most likely since bulk measurements ignore OMY concentration at the root, where germs get in touch with the plant straight 56,57 OMY concentration gradients might discuss the strong luminescence of OMY-dependent press reporter stress grown with MfnG-expressing plants, the OMY-independent press reporter likewise revealed a modest boost in luminescence near the roots of every plant genotype, recommending that bacterial cell density might increase near the roots58 and add to a regional increase in luminescence signal. We did not straight determine OMY concentration or bacterial cell density at the root, identifying germs with a constitutive fluorescent marker, measuring OMY and determining bacterial CFU drawn out from the gel matrix at various plate areas would assist evaluate the contribution of chemical and cell concentration gradients to press reporter signals.

Here, we extend GCE innovation from intracellular protein engineering to programmable interactions in between organisms. GCE has actually mostly concentrated on engineering extra chemistries within a single organism59 consisting of exogenous supply of artificial ncAAs to manage gene expression through making use of translational switches27,60and survival of crafted microbes61,62 Leaders in the field have long hypothesized that these type of orthogonal biological systems would enhance biosafety of crafted organisms by allowing advancement of a ‘hereditary firewall program’ that would restrict horizontal gene transfer63,64,65These tools and concepts each pertain to applications in ecological biotechnology, previous work has actually not understood the production of a self-dependent set of crafted organisms sharing a personal interaction channel utilizing GCE. One exception is our own current work, where we showed an evidence of idea of eco-friendly control of gene expression and survival amongst 2 craftedE colistress25The system that we provide here represents an evidence of principle that GCE can connect plants and ecologically appropriate microbes throughout kingdoms utilizing an ncAA as the shared signal, with self-governing and spatiotemporally managed synthesis of the ncAA by a multicellular organism.

NcAA-enabled plant-based control of microbial activity has the capacity for varied future applications. While we showed control over press reporter expression and surfactin biosynthesis, the exact same technique might be utilized to manage the production of other plant-growth-promoting proteins, such as biosynthetic enzymes for antipathogen substances, metal chelators and mineral-solubilizing enzymes66,67Tissue-specific and inducible expression of MfnG might be extended to engineer systems where bacterial activity reacts to plant understanding of tension, nutrition status or developmental hints68 Excitingly, ncAAs unlock to biosynthesis of proteins with nonnatural chemistries in the rhizosphere69,70 By including ncAAs into choose proteins, crafted microbes might make totally brand-new particles for plants. The general idea we provide here is likewise easily extensible to other ncAAs. Numerous ncAAs have actually been recognized in nature16,71and lots more can be accessed through created semisynthetic paths72 Advancement of equally orthogonal tRNA/synthetase sets might allow multiplexed signaling where various plant hints activate unique bacterial actions. Completely, ncAAs represent a large and mainly untapped vocabulary for engineering plant control over their microbiomes.

data-title=”Methods”> MethodsBacterial stress and development conditions

E colipressures NEB10β and DH5a were utilized to build all plasmids.A tumefacienspressure GV3101 consisting of assistant plasmid pSoup( TetR) was utilized for all Arabidopsis and Nicotianaimprovements78 R rhizogenesstress K599( Intact Genomics, 1087) was utilized for all hairy root improvements. All B subtilis pressures were stemmed from the prototrophic lab pressure PY79 (refs.32,79 or root isolate UD1022 (ref.41. E coliand Agrobacterium stress were grown in Luria– Bertani (POUND) Lenox medium (Sigma L3022) in breeding shakers at 250 rpm (New Brunswick Scientific Innova 44) at 37 ° C (Ecoli or 28 ° C ( Agrobacterium . Prescription antibiotics were utilized at the following concentrations unless otherwise kept in mind: carbenicillin 100 μg ml− 1(GoldBio, C-103), kanamycin 50 μg ml− 1(GoldBio, K-120), spectinomycin 100 μg ml− 1(Sigma, S4014), gentamycin 50 μg ml− 1(GoldBio, G-400), rifampicin 15 μg ml− 1(GoldBio, R-120) and tetracycline 10 μg ml− 1 (GoldBio, T-101). All pressures utilized in this research study can be discovered in Supplementary Table 1.

Recombinant DNA building and construction

All constructs in this research study were produced utilizing Assembly80Golden Gate81and/or overlap extension PCR. DNA parts (promoters, coding series and terminators) were cloned utilizing Gibson assembly into beginning plasmids (level 0), with flanking BsaI cut websites. Cassettes made up of promoters, coding series and terminators were put together utilizing Golden Gate responses to produce constructs (20-µl overall response volume: 2 µl of 10 × T4 ligase buffer, 2 µl of BsaI-HF and 1 µl of T4 DNA ligase; New England Biolabs). All constructs and building and construction guides utilized in this research study can be discovered in Supplementary Tables 2 and 3. Linearized DNA pieces for cloning inB subtiliswere produced with homemade Gibson assembly mixes integrating 3 unique pieces: (1) an upstream area including homologous DNA with the picked genomic insertion website, antibiotic resistance cassette, regulator and promoter (if suitable); (2) the press reporter of interest; and (3) a downstream area consisting of homologous DNA with the picked genomic insertion website consisting of the native terminator.

B subtilispressure building

Improvement of genomic, plasmid or linearized DNA into B subtilisfollowed a natural proficiency procedure. The moms and dad pressures were spotted onto pound (Lennox) plates the day before change. Newly grown nests were inoculated into 1 ml of improvement medium described as MC medium (100 mM potassium phosphate (monobasic: Sigma-Aldrich, P9791; dibasic: Sigma-Aldrich, P9666), 3 mM trisodium citrate (Alfa Aesar, A12274), 2% D-glucose (TCI America, G004825G), 22 mg ml− 1ferric ammonium citrate (Alfa Aesar, A11199), 0.1% casein hydrolysate (Sigma-Aldrich, 22090) and 0.2% L-glutamic acid monopotassium salt (Alfa Aesar, A17232)) supplemented with 3 μl of 1 M magnesium sulfate (Sigma-Aldrich, M7506) and grown for 4 h at 37 ° C in a roller drum (Thermo Scientific Cel-Gro Tissue Culture Rotator Model 1640). 200 μl of culture was blended with 1,000 ng of direct DNA, 250 ng of plasmid DNA or 5 μl ofB subtilisgenomic DNA for change. Cultures were nurtured at 37 ° C in a roller drum for another 2 h and after that plated on pound agar plates consisting of the proper prescription antibiotics (10 μg ml − 1kanamycin (Sigma-Aldrich, K4000) or 5 μg ml − 1 chloramphenicol (Sigma-Aldrich, C0378)). Single nests were chosen and validated by sequencing of cleansed nest PCR items. For nest PCR, specific B subtilisnests were suspended in 50 μl of Tris– EDTA buffer (10 mM Tris (Sigma-Aldrich, 252859) and 1 mM EDTA (Sigma-Aldrich, E9884), pH adapted to 8.0 with NaOH/HCl) and after that frozen at − 20 ° C for 15 minutes to lyse the cells. Next, 1– 2 μl of the thawed cellular mix was utilized as a PCR design template.

Antibiotic resistance genes were eliminated according to procedures based upon Cre recombinase activity82 Quickly, stress were changed with the pDR244 plasmid. Transformants were spotted on pound agar consisting of no prescription antibiotics and grown over night at 42 ° C, after which stress were spotted out on medium consisting of the initial antibiotic the stress was resistant to, spectinomycin (last concentration: 100 μg ml− 1 or no antibiotic to verify correct treating of the plasmid and antibiotic resistance gene.

Genomic DNA extraction

B subtilisgenomic DNA was drawn out utilizing a customized procedure for the Qiagen DNeasy blood and tissue extraction package (Qiagen, 69504). The pressure of interest was spotted out on a pound agar plate and grown over night at 37 ° C. A culture was inoculated in pound from a nest and grown to an optical density at 600 nm (OD600 of 1.0 at 37 ° C shaking for 4– 6 h. Cells were then pelleted and resuspended in 180 ml of lysozyme buffer (20 mM Tris-HCl pH 8.0, 2 mM Na EDTA and 1.2% Triton X-100 with 40 mg ml− 1 lysozyme included the day of usage) and nurtured at 37 ° C, shaking for 30 minutes. Following lysis, 25 ml of proteinase K and 200 ml of buffer AL from the Qiagen package were contributed to the lysate. After a 30-min incubation at 70 ° C with shaking, 200 ml of 100% ethanol was contributed to the mix. Contents were then contributed to a spin column and spun down at 20,000 g for 1 minutes. Flowthrough was eliminated and 500 ml of buffer AW1 was contributed to the spin column. The column was spun as soon as again at 20,000 gfor 1 minutes. Flowthrough was gotten rid of and 500 ml of buffer AW2 was included. The column was then centrifuged at 20,000g for 3 minutes to get rid of all buffer. The spin column was then relocated to an Eppendorf tube and 200 ml of buffer AE contributed to the spin column. The mix was nurtured at space temperature level for 1– 5 minutes and after that spun down to elute genomic DNA.

Determining ncAA-dependent press reporter gene expression inB subtilis

To determine ncAA-dependent press reporter gene expression, fresh nests of crafted
B subtilis were chosen from pound plates with prescription antibiotics (10 μg ml− 1 kanamycin and 5 μg ml− 1 chloramphenicol) and inoculated into 1 ml of liquid pound medium in a 15-ml culture tube including the very same prescription antibiotics. These cultures were grown at 25 ° C to an OD600of 0.2– 0.4 in a roller drum and after that subcultured depending upon the press reporter utilized. For the nanoluciferase press reporter pressures (stress bMJ252-254, and bMJ257-259), cultures were watered down to an OD of ~ 0.002 in pound with chloramphenicol, kanamycin and 100 μM OMY (Fisher Scientific M22761G). For the fluorescent press reporter pressures (stress bMJ024 and bMJ182), cultures were watered down to an OD of 0.02 in a very little medium with 1/2 × Murashige– Skoog basal salt mix (PhytoTech Labs, M524), 1.5% sucrose (Sigma-Aldrich, S0389) and 10 mM L-glutamate (Acros Organics, 156211000) with OMY supplemented at the concentration defined. We leveraged leaking pHyperspank activity for constitutive expression without IPTG induction. Cultures were grown overnight in 300 μl in a 1.3-ml-deep well plate (Fisher Scientific, 12566611) at 1,000 rpm in a shaker with a 2.5-mm orbit (Thermo Scientific, 88882005) and nurtured at 25 ° C unless otherwise defined.

For fluorescent endpoint measurements, 100 μl of the cultures were watered down 1:1 with 100 μl of 1 × PBS (Sigma-Aldrich, P4417) and after that the absorbance (600 nm) and fluorescence (excitation: 485 nm, emission: 525) read utilizing a Biotek H1 Synergy spectrophotometric plate reader in a black-walled 96-well plate (Fisher Scientific, Greiner-Bio, 07-000-166). Endpoint measurements were likewise carried out in a different experiment utilizing circulation cytometry for Extended Data Fig. 6a with settings defined later on.

For the nanoluciferase endpoint measurements, cultures were watered down 1:10 with 1 × PBS and OD600 worths were determined in a black-walled 96-well plate before including the luciferin reagent. To determine nanoluciferase activity, the Nano-Glo luciferase reagent (Promega N2011) was watered down 1:400 in a 5% service of the reagent buffer in 1 × PBS. The diluted cultures were then blended in a 1:1 ratio with assay substrate to an overall volume of 50 μl in a half-area white-walled 96-well plate (Corning, 3885) and check out throughout 10 minutes on the Biotek H1 Synergy plate reader utilizing a combination time of 1 s, complete light emission, leading optics, regular read speed with a 100-ms hold-up and extended vibrant variety. The gain was set to 120 after being scaled immediately to the well with the greatest luminescence worth (the well consisting of the pressure with the wild-type press reporter).

For fluorescence measurements by circulation cytometry, fluorescence was measured utilizing a NovoCyte circulation cytometer. Samples were kept up a circulation rate of 14 μl minutes− 1 B subtilis cells were recognized and counted by their clustering in the FSC– SSC area and after that gated for singlets. Samples were run up until 10,000 occasions were caught within these gates (Extended Data Fig. 4). Single-cell mNeongreen fluorescence levels were determined utilizing a blue laser (488 nM) and the FITC-H filter. The math mean of fluorescence circulation was computed for each duplicate.

Surfactin metrology

Stress were grown from pound agar plates to an OD600of roughly 1.0 in 1/2 × Murashige– Skoog medium supplemented with 1.5% sucrose and 10 mM glutamate including prescription antibiotics (last concentration of chloramphenicol: 5 µg ml− 1 . Pressures were then inoculated into 300 µl of the very same medium, supplemented with OMY as defined, at a preliminary OD600 of 0.01 in deep-well 96-well plates. Samples were grown for 24 h in an incubator at 37 ° C and shaken at 1,000 rpm before centrifugation to pellet cells. Supernatant was gathered for surfactin production metrology.

Surfactin was measured utilizing high-performance LC (HPLC) with an Agilent 1100 Infinity design with a Zorbax Eclipse Plus-C18 column with a guard column set up. To separate surfactin peaks, an isocratic technique of acetonitrile with 1% trifluoroacetic acid was utilized and samples were compared to a business requirement (Smolecule, 24730-31-2). Quickly, 50 μL of sample was injected and run for 10 minutes and absorbance was evaluated at 205 nm. Metrology was achieved by comparing peak locations of 3 significant peaks in the business requirement.

Development kinetics ofBsubtilis

PY79 revealing an orthogonal aaRS and tRNA (bDS176) was spotted out on pound agar plates with 10 μg ml− 1 chloramphenicol from glycerol stocks. Single nests were chosen and grown in pound medium with 10 μg ml− 1 chloramphenicol for about 4 h at 30 ° C till they reached an OD600 of around 1.0. Cells were then inoculated at an OD600of 0.01 into 1/2 × Murashige– Skoog medium with 1.5% sucrose and 10 mM L-glutamate with differing concentrations of OMY and 10 μg ml− 1 chloramphenicol. Development was kept track of utilizing OD600 measurements on a Biotek Synergy H1 plate reader for 24 h with constant shaking at 30 ° C.

Circulation cytometry of microbes drawn out from soil

Soil (Espoma natural potting mix, 00050197701044) samples were prepared by weighing out 1 g of soil into glass culture tubes (18 × 150 mm) and autoclave-sterilizing for 20 minutes at 121 ° C. Bacteria were grown by choosing fresh nests from pound agar into liquid pound medium, both consisting of prescription antibiotics (chloramphenicol, last concentration: 5 µg ml− 1; kanamycin, last concentration: 10 µg ml− 1. These cultures were grown at 37 ° C to an OD600 of 0.2– 0.4 in a roller drum. Cells were cleaned 6 times in PBS before watering down to a last OD600 of 0.5 and including 1 mM IPTG and 500 µM OMY. Next, 1 ml of cell suspension was blended into each soil sample. Samples were bred at 25 ° C in the dark with a moist paper towel to avoid samples from drying. After 1– 3 days, cells were collected by including 5 ml of sterilized PBS to the germs– soil mix, vortexing and infiltrating a 10-µm syringe filter. Fluorescence was measured utilizing a NovoCyte circulation cytometer. Samples were kept up a circulation rate of 14 μl minutes− 1 B subtiliscells were recognized and counted by their clustering in the FSC– SSC area; gates for singlets were made use of PY79 and UD1022 samples grown in liquid pound and after that used to samples drawn out from soil (Supplementary Data Fig. 2). Samples were run till 10,000 occasions were caught within these gates. Single-cell mNeongreen fluorescence levels were determined utilizing a blue laser (488 nM) and the FITC-H filter. The math average of fluorescence circulation was computed for each reproduce.

Cocultivation of microbes and plants in soil

Soil was sieved through a mesh strainer and 0.5 g was weighed out into a 15-ml cone-shaped tube. Soil and tubes were autoclaved at 121 ° C for 20 minutes. Presterilized Arabidopsisseeds were imbibed in 1.5 ml of sterilized water and cold-stratified in the dark for 3 days at 4 ° C. After stratification, seeds were planted into autoclaved soil and nurtured at 22 ° C in 60% relative humidity with a 16-h/8-h photoperiod for plants to sprout and grow. B subtiliswere gotten ready for cocultivation by collecting rapid stage cultures grown in pound and cleaning 6 times in sterilized water. After cleaning, cultures were watered down to an OD600 of 0.1 and combined with 1 mM IPTG. 500 μl of the cell service was included to the soil including 11-day-old seedlings. Plants and germs were cocultured for 3 days before samples were gathered for circulation cytometry analysis as explained above.

Plant development conditions

N benthamianaplants were grown and kept in a Percival development chamber (AR100L3) at 24 ° C in 12-h light– dark cycles with 70% relative humidity. Light was supplied by fluorescent white lights at a photon flux density of ~ 150– 200 μmol m− 2 s− 1 Plants were grown in 4-inch pots with soil including mycorrhizae, peat moss and perlite (PRO-MIX BX 10381RG).

A thalianaplants were grown and kept in a walk-in development chamber (Percival AR-712L4) at 22/18 ° C in 16-h/8-h light– dark cycles with 60% relative humidity for change and seed proliferation. Light was supplied by LED ranges at a photon flux density of ~ 145 μmol m− 2s− 1Plants were grown in 4-inch pots with soil consisting of mycorrhizae, peat moss and perlite (PRO-MIX BX 10381RG).

A thalianaplants for imaging were grown and kept in a different development chamber (Percival, CU36L4) at 22/18 ° C in 16-h/8-h light– dark cycles. Light was offered by white fluorescent lights at a photon flux density of ~ 145 μmol m− 2 s− 1 Plants for imaging and root structure analysis were plated as seeds onto sterilized Murashige– Skoog medium including 0.6% Gelzan (Bioworld, 30634003), 1 × Murashige– Skoog basal salt mix (PhytoTech Labs, M524), 1% sucrose (Sigma, S0389) and 0.05% MES (Sigma-Aldrich, M8250), pH 5.7. Before plating, seeds were surface-sterilized with 70% ethanol for 5 minutes, followed by 20% bleach and 0.1% (v/v) Tween-20 (Sigma-Aldrich, P7949) for 5 minutes, and after that cleaned 3 times with water for 2 minutes each. Seeds were cold-stratified for 3 days at 4 ° C in the dark, either on the plate or in water before plating, before transfer to the development chamber. Plates were sealed with micropore tape (3M, 1530-0) to permit gas exchange.

Short-term expression of constructs inN benthamianaleaves

A tumefaciensGV3101 cultures harboring the wanted plasmids were inoculated from frozen glycerol stock (18% glycerol) into 14-ml culture tubes (VWR, 47729-566) consisting of 2 ml of pound medium with prescription antibiotics. Cultures were grown for 24 h at 28 ° C and 250 rpm. The next day, cultures were backdiluted to an OD600 of 0.02 in fresh pound medium with prescription antibiotics and grown for another 24 h at 28 ° C and 250 rpm. Cells were then gathered by centrifugation (8 minutes, 3,000 g resuspended in 1 ml of seepage buffer (10 mM MgCl2 (Sigma, M8266), 10 mM MES pH 5.7 (Sigma, M8250) and 150 μM acetosyringone (Cayman, 23224)) and bred at space temperature level for 3 h. Agrobacterium pressures were then combined to create samples for leaf seepage. The pressure consisting of the sfGFP– MfnG construct was contributed to the mix at an OD600 of 0.3 and a stress consisting of the p19 suppressor of silencing was included at an OD600 of 0.2. Last sample volumes were adapted to 1 ml utilizing seepage buffer. Samples were penetrated into the abaxial side of the N benthamiana leaves utilizing a 1-ml needleless syringe (Fisher Scientific, 22-253-260). Penetrated plants were gone back to regular development conditions for ~ 72 h. Leaf discs were then collected from penetrated and uninfiltrated locations of the leaf utilizing the back of a pipette suggestion (P20; Rainin, 17005873) for metabolite extraction and LC– MS analysis.

Generation of Arabidopsistransgenic lines

Heritable transgenic lines of Arabidopsis
were created by A tumefaciens -moderated flower dip of Athaliana Col-0 ecotype83 Quickly, A tumefaciens
cultures were inoculated from frozen glycerol stock (18% glycerol) into 14-ml culture tubes including 2 ml of pound medium with prescription antibiotics. Cultures were grown for 24 h at 28 ° C and 250 rpm. After incubation, 250 μl of bacterial culture was plated on 15-cm round pound agar plates including prescription antibiotics and bred for 2 nights at 28 ° C. Next, the cells were scraped from plates and resuspended in 200 ml of improvement buffer (50 g L− 1sucrose and 250 μl L− 1Silwet L-77 (Bioworld, 30630216)).Arabidopsisinflorescences were quickly immersed in the bacterial option and after that moved to a dark, damp container where they were enabled to nurture over night. The following day, changed plants were gone back to regular development conditions where they continued to grow till they produced seeds. Transgenic seeds were evaluated utilizing fluorescence microscopy. All constructs utilized for Arabidopsis change include FastRed, a seed-specific TagRFP marker, which allows choice of T1 transgenic plants by evaluating for red fluorescence in dry seeds84For each construct, we evaluated numerous independent T1 occasions and chosen several representative lines, signified by occasion number, for additional characterization.

Generation of OMY-producing tomato hairy roots

Tomato seeds ( S lycopersicumcv. Heinz 1706) were surface-sterilized by briefly soaking (<<1 minutes) in 70% (v/v) ethanol, followed by incubation for 15 minutes in a sanitation option consisting of 2.5% (v/v) salt hypochlorite (prepared by watering down 3 ml of 8.25% business bleach in 10 ml of pure water) and 0.05% (v/v) Tween-20. Seeds were then cleaned 5 times with sterilized pure water and drained pipes completely. Sanitized seeds were soaked over night in sterilized pure water at space temperature level and consequently put on sterilized Murashige– Skoog medium plates including 0.6% Gelzan, 0.5 × Murashige– Skoog basal salt mix and 0.05% MES at pH 5.7. Seedlings were grown in a development chamber (Percival, CU36L4) in basic conditions (22/18 ° C, 16-h/8-h light– dark cycles) with a photon flux density of around 145 μmol m− 2s− 1for 8 days. The radicle and lower hypocotyl of 8-day-old seedlings were excised, keeping the apical 4 cm of the hypocotyl. The newly cut injury surface area was inoculated by covering with transgenic R rhizogenespressure K599 harboring the construct of interest. The germs were precultured on YEB plates supplemented with 100 µg ml− 1kanamycin and 200 µM acetosyringone and after that used to the injury surface area utilizing a sterilized pipette suggestion. Inoculated seedlings were moved to fresh Murashige– Skoog gelzan plates and cocultivated for 3 days under the very same development chamber conditions. After cocultivation, seedlings were moved to Murashige– Skoog gelzan plates supplemented with 400 mg L− 1timentin (Goldbio, T-104) to remove R rhizogenesSeedlings were subcultured onto fresh timentin-containing Murashige– Skoog plates every 14 days. Adventitious roots emerging at first from the injury website are not transgenic; transgenic hairy roots were very first observed around 2 weeks after shot. Plants were kept for 6 weeks after shot to permit enough transgenic root biomass to build up before usage in downstream luminescence assays.

Generation of OMY-producing poplar hairy roots

P tremula× alba (clone INRA 717-1B4) plants were grown under aseptic conditions in Murashige– Skoog agar medium (0.5 × Murashige– Skoog basal medium with vitamins (PhytoTech Labs, M519), 4 g L− 1 sucrose, 7 g L− 1 phytoagar (Bioworld, 40100072) and 0.05% MES, pH 5.8) in a development chamber (Percival, CU36L4) under basic conditions (22/18 ° C, 16-h/8-h light– dark cycles with a photon flux density of around 145 μmol m− 2s1 . Apical explants were gotten ready for improvement by excising plant sections with 2 to 3 leaves utilizing a sterilized scalpel. The newly cut injury surface area was inoculated by dragging it throughout a yard of transgenic Rrhizogenes stress K599 harboring the construct of interest. The germs were precultured in 5 ml of liquid pound medium supplemented with suitable choice prescription antibiotics at 28 ° C for 24 h and after that plated onto strong pound medium including prescription antibiotics and 200 μM acetosyringone. Plates were bred at 28 ° C for 48 h to develop a bacterial yard for shot. Inoculated explants were instantly placed into antibiotic-free Murashige– Skoog medium and cocultivated for 3 days under the exact same development chamber conditions as previously. Following cocultivation, explants were moved to fresh Murashige– Skoog medium supplemented with 200 mg L− 1 timentin and 200 mg L− 1 carbenicillin to get rid ofR rhizogenes Transgenic hairy roots were very first observed around 4 weeks after shot. At 5 weeks after shot, changed plants were excised from the selective medium for cocultivation with Bsubtilis luciferase press reporter stress for luminescence assays.

Fluorescence imaging of Arabidopsistransgenic lines

Fluorescence pictures of Arabidopsis lines revealing sfGFP– MfnG constructs were gathered utilizing a Leica THUNDER widefield fluorescence microscopic lense (M205 FCA) with the ET GFP filter (Leica, 10447408; excitation: 470/40, emission: 525/50) at 150 ms or 500 ms of direct exposure as kept in mind. All image processing was carried out utilizing the Fiji software application. Processing actions consisted of setting limits for minimum and optimum brightness, using LUTs (Green for green fluorescence, Fire for luminescence), producing color bars and combining channels.

Root exudate collection and metabolite extraction

Root exudate from wild-type Col-0 and transgenic MfnG-expressing Arabidopsis was gathered in Murashige– Skoog medium for metabolite metrology by LC– MS. Seeds were planted on sterilized Murashige– Skoog plates (0.5 × Murashige– Skoog basal salts, 1% sucrose and 0.6% Gelzan, pH 5.7), stratified for 3 days in the dark at 4 ° C, then relocated to the development chamber (Percival, CU36L4) and grown under basic conditions (22/18 ° C, 16-h/8-h light/dark cycles). After 6 days, seedlings were moved to 3 ′ × 3 ′ × 4 ′ Magenta boxes (Bioworld, 30930007 GA-7) for hydroponic development in 12 ml of sterilized liquid medium (0.5 × Murashige– Skoog basal salts and 1% sucrose, pH 5.7). Magenta boxes were sealed with micropore tape and bred for 48 h under basic Arabidopsis development conditions on an orbital shaker at 50 rpm. After 48 h, 10 ml of medium was gathered from each box with a serological pipette, syringe-filtered through a 0.45- µm filter and moved to 15-ml centrifuge tubes. To prepare samples for lyophilization, tubes were frozen at − 80 ° C for 30 minutes and after that relocated to solidified carbon dioxide. Tube caps were changed by Kimwipes protected over the opening with elastic band for lyophilization in a Labconco lyophilizer (Labconco, 710612010) for 24 h. Samples were kept at − 80 ° C after lyophilization up until metabolite extraction. To draw out metabolites, 500 µl of 80% methanol (v/v) was contributed to each sample, briefly vortexed, sonicated (Branson, 2800) for 15 minutes on the high setting and centrifuged for 10 minutes (Thermo Scientific Sorvall X4R Pro TX1000 rotor) at 3,700 gFor each sample, 400 µl of supernatant was tested for LC– MS analysis.

LC– MS analysis to measure OMY production

LC– MS samples were examined on an Agilent 1260 HPLC system paired to an Agilent 6520 Q-TOF MS instrument. Separation was carried out utilizing a Gemini 5-μm NX-C18 110-Å column (2 × 100 mm; Phenomenex) with a mix of 0.1% formic acid in water (A) and 0.1% formic acid in acetonitrile (B) at a consistent circulation rate of 400 μl per minutes at space temperature level. The injection volume was 3 μl for speculative samples and 1 μl for metabolite requirements. The following gradient of solvent B was utilized: 1% 0– 1 minutes, 1– 8% 1– 3 minutes, 8– 97% 3– 15 minutes, 97– 1% 15– 16 minutes, 1% 16– 22 minutes. MS information were gathered utilizing electrospray ionization in favorable mode with a mass series of 50– 1,200 m/ zand a rate of one spectrum per second. The ionization source was set as follows: 325 ° C gas temperature level, 10 L minutes− 1 drying gas, 35 psi nebulizer, 3,500 V V Cap 150 V fragmentor, 65 V skimmer and 750 V octupole 1 RF Vpp

Information were gathered with Agilent MassHunter Workstation Data Acquisition and examined by MassHunter Qualitative Analysis (variation 10.0). Drawn out ion chromatograms (EICs) were drawn out for+ ions utilizing 196.067 m / z for OMY and 182.0800 m / zfor tyrosine, with a mistake of 20 ppm. Counts per minute information were exported to CSV apply for additional information analysis and visualization. For conversion of incorporated peak worths to OMY concentration, an OMY calibration curve was performed at the very same time as the samples with concentrations 0.5 µM, 1 µM, 2 µM, 5 µM, 25 µM and 100 µM with 2 technical duplicates per concentration. OMY stock for LC– MS was prepared at 10 mM with MilliQ water without changing pH.

Root phenotyping

For analysis of root length, lateral root density and gravitropism, Arabidopsis seeds were sprouted and grown on Murashige– Skoog medium including 0.6% Gelzan (Bioworld 30634003), 1 × Murashige– Skoog basal salt mix (PhytoTech Labs, M524), 1% sucrose (Sigma, S0389) and 0.05% MES (Sigma-Aldrich, M8250), pH 5.7. For exogenous treatment of seedlings with OMY, suitable volumes of filter-sterilized 500 mM stock option of OMY (Chem-Impex, 06251) were blended into the Murashige– Skoog gelzan medium before gelling. OMY stock option was prepared in MilliQ water with 10 M KOH included up until all OMY was liquified (last pH: ~ 11). For exogenous treatment of seedlings with basic amino acids, filter-sterilized L-tyrosine (1 mM in MilliQ, pH gotten used to 9.7 with 10 M KOH, over night stirring; Research Products International, T68500) and L-phenylalanine (11 mM in MilliQ; Research Products International, P20260) stocks were contributed to Murashige– Skoog gelzan medium before gelling. Seeds were planted and sprouted straight on OMY and amino acid treatment plates. After development, plates were imaged utilizing a dual-light flatbed scanner (Epson V800, 800 dpi) at various time points after stratification, as explained in the figure captions. Overall root length was measured utilizing the Fiji SmartRoot tool85and determined from the hypocotyl– root junction to the root pointer. Plants that did not sprout were marked down from the analysis. The variety of emerged lateral roots was counted from the scanned images. Lateral root density determined as the variety of emerged lateral roots divided by main root length. Gravitropism rating is determined as the vector length of the root on the plate divided by main root length.

Cocultivation of plants and germs on plates for luciferase imaging of OMY incorporation

To produce the germs– agar matrix for cocultivation of plants and germs, B subtilis stress were spotted from frozen glycerol stocks onto pound agar plates with suitable prescription antibiotics and nurtured at 37 ° C over night. Nests were inoculated into 50 ml of pound without prescription antibiotics in 200-ml flasks and nurtured at 37 ° C with 250 rpm shaking. After cultures reached an OD600 of ~ 1 (3– 4 h), they were decanted into 50-ml centrifuge tubes (Corning, 352070) and cleaned 3 times with 25 ml of sterilized 1 × PBS (Sigma-Aldrich, P4417-100TAB), each time pelleting at 3,700 gfor 10 minutes (Thermo Scientific Sorvall X4R Pro TX1000 rotor). The last pellet was resuspended in 1 ml of 1 × PBS. Murashige– Skoog agar medium (0.5 × Murashige– Skoog basal salts, 1% sucrose, 1% agar and 0.05% MES, pH 5.7) was prepared, autoclaved and permitted to cool to ~ 55 ° C. Bacteria were then blended into the medium at a last OD600 of 0.1. When suitable, β-estradiol was blended into the Murashige– Skoog agar at this phase (1:1,000 v/v) to a last concentration of 20 μM. After blending, the germs– agar mix was instantly pipetted into sterilized petri meals. For Arabidopsisseedlings, 30 ml of mix was contributed to 100-mm square plates (Genesee, 26-275); for tomato composite hairy roots, 50 ml was contributed to 120-mm square plates (Greiner-Bio-One, 688161); for poplar composite hairy roots, 250 ml was contributed to 245-mm square plates (Corning, 431111).

As soon as the germs– agar matrix cooled, plants were moved onto the plates for cocultivation utilizing sterilized forceps. Plant roots were positioned straight onto the surface area of the strengthened germs– agar matrix, permitting root– germs contact to happen at the agar surface area. Arabidopsisplants or composite plants were put onto each plate, which were then sealed with micropore tape, covered in foil from the bottom as much as the top of the shoot and went back to the development chamber for cocultivation in basic conditions. A schematic of the cocultivation setup is offered in Supplementary Fig. 1.

After 4 days of cocultivation (5 days for poplar), luciferin was used to the plate as an agarose movie. This luciferin– agarose mix is overlaid on top of the cocultivated roots and germs to provide the luciferase substrate for imaging. To produce this movie, 0.8% agarose (Research Products International, A20090) was liquified in water and cooled to ~ 55 ° C. NanoFuel (NanoLight Technology, 324-50; Arabidopsis assays) or Nano-Glo (Promega, N1110; tomato and poplar assays) substrates were watered down 1:25 into their particular buffers and after that contributed to the molten agarose option for a last dilution of 1:500. Luciferin– agarose mixes were right away used to cocultivation plates by gradually pipetting a thin surface area layer over plants roots and germs (10 ml forArabidopsisassays, 15 ml for tomato and 60 ml for poplar). Cocultivation plates were instantly imaged with an iBright Imaging System (Invitrogen, FL1500) with the following settings: brightfield (membrane channel, autoexposure), luminescence (ChemiBlot channel, 30 s of direct exposure unless otherwise suggested), fluorescence (RFP, excitation: 515– 545 nm, emission: 568– 617 nm, 15 ms of direct exposure; GFP, excitation: 455– 485 nm, emission: 508– 557 nm, 15 ms of direct exposure). All image processing was carried out utilizing Fiji software application. Processing actions consisted of setting limits for optimum brightness, using LUTs (Green for green fluorescence, Fire for luminescence), producing color bars and combining channels.

For β-estradiol induction, 20 mM β-estradiol was blended into the Murashige– Skoog gelzan– germs medium before gelling at 1:1,000 v/v. β-Estradiol (Sigma-Aldrich, E2758) stock option was prepared in DMSO (Sigma-Aldrich, 34869).

Metrology and analysis of luminescence strength

Raw luminescence (ChemiBlot channel) images (16-bit) were utilized for metrology with Fiji. Square areas of interest (ROIs) were made use of the matching brightfield image (membrane channel) following grid verge on the petri meal. Return of investments were propagated to the luminescence image and the ‘plot profile’ tool was utilized to outline the vertically balanced pixel strength at ranges along the x axis, beginning with 0 cm at the left extreme.

More information analysis was executed in Python 3 utilizing numpy, scipy (variation 1.11) and pandas. Regional optimums (peaks) in the luminescence strength profile representing the place of private seedlings were drawn out as follows. Each profile was smoothed with a uniform (boxcar) moving-average filter (kernel width=1/10 of the anticipated interpeak spacing) to decrease sound. Prospect peaks were recognized utilizing scipy.signal.find _ peaks with a minimum interpeak range set to half the anticipated spacing. The prominence limit specification was iteratively reduced from 30% to 1% of the strength worth variety up until a minimum ofn(the variety of seedlings) peaks were discovered. Just thenmost popular peaks were maintained. If less thannpeaks were found, the biggest interpeak space was bisected and the regional optimum within that space was included. Each found peak was then snapped to the regional optimum of the unsmoothed profile within ± 3 information points (~ 0.08 cm). For PY79 unfavorable control plates, as no peaks were anticipated, peak positions were designated to repaired equidistant periods along thex axis.

For each peak at position x 0 2 midpoints were specified:x 1 midway in betweenx 0and the nearby peak to the left (or the profile start) and x 2midway to the nearby peak to the right (or the profile end). The peak (optimum) strength ywas taken as the precise (unsmoothed) worth at x0 The standard strengthsy 1 and y2were calculated as the mean worth within ± 0.1 cm of x1 and x2 respectively, and balanced to yield the base strength y 0=( y1+ y 2 / 2. The stabilized luminescence ratio (fold modification) was computed as y / y0 Peak and midpoint areas are annotated in Supplementary Fig. 3. Claude Science Opus 4.6 was utilized in the advancement of the Python analysis script.

Proteomics

All surface areas and devices were cleaned up with ethanol to avoid keratin contamination. Methanol was prevented to avoid synthetic methylation.

Protein extraction

Arabidopsis seedlings were grown on 1 × Murashige– Skoog gelzan plates and gathered at 14 days. Shoot and root tissue was separated with a razor blade and put into different 2-ml Safe-Lock tubes (Eppendorf, 022363344) with forceps. Samples were right away weighed, flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen and after that kept at − 80 ° C up until extraction. Test collection information are supplied in Supplementary Table 4. To homogenize tissue, one metal bead was contributed to each tube and samples were lysed for 2 minutes at 30 Hz (RETSCH MM 400 Mixer Mill). Next, 2 × SDS sample packing buffer (125 mM Tris-HCl pH 6.8 (VWR, 97061-796), 4% SDS (Sigma, 1125330250), 20% glycerol (Sigma, G5516) and 5% v/v β-mercaptoethanol (Sigma, M3148)) was contributed to tissues at 3:1 v/w. Samples were then boiled for 5 minutes at 95 ° C (Thermolyne DB28125 Dri-Bath, Marshall Scientific). After cooling, samples were spun down in a benchtop centrifuge at 16,000 g for 20 minutes and supernatants were drawn out into brand-new tubes for gel filtration.

Gel electrophoresis and staining/destaining

50 µl of each supernatant was filled into the well of a polyacrylamide gel (Bio-Rad, 4561094). buffer lane was left in between each sample to avoid cross-contamination. Samples were run in 1 × Tris– glycine– SDS buffer (Bio-Rad, 1610732) at 100 V up until 5– 10 mm into the fixing gel. The gel was then stained for 6 h in a methanol-free staining buffer to avoid synthetic methylation. Next, 50 ml of buffer was prepared with the following in double-distilled H2 O: 10.5 g of citric acid monohydrate (last concentration: 1 M; Millipore Sigma, C1909), 2.5 ml of glacial acetic acid (last concentration: 5%; Fisher Chemicals, AA36289AP) and 5 ml of stainer B and 10 ml of stainer A from the Invitrogen colloidal blue staining package (Thermo Fisher Scientific, LC6025). Gels were destained with HPLC-grade water over night.

Protein in-gel food digestion and peptide filtration

Following destaining, entire protein bands were excised from the gel utilizing a scalpel inside a laminar circulation hood, restricted to an optimum length of 10 mm. Excised bands were diced into little 1-mm2 pieces in the existence of a bead of MS-grade water to help with cutting and the pieces were moved into 0.65 ml of low-retention microcentrifuge tubes (Fisher Scientific, 13698793). The gel pieces were destained by 3 wash cycles with 400 µl of buffer B1 (25 mM ammonium bicarbonate (Millipore Sigma A6141) in 50% acetonitrile (v/v; Fisher Chemicals, A998SK-4), vortexing for 10 minutes and getting rid of the supernatant. This was followed by one 5-min wash cycle with buffer A1 (25 mM ammonium bicarbonate in double-distilled H2O) and one 15-min wash cycle with buffer B1, till the blue color mainly vanished from the gel pieces.

For decrease and alkylation, disulfide bonds were minimized by nurturing the gel pieces in 100 µl of 10 mM dithiothreitol (Millipore Sigma, D0632) (prepared from 500 mM stock in 25 mM ammonium bicarbonate) at 56 ° C for 1 h. After cooling to space temperature level, 100 µl of 50 mM iodoacetamide (Millipore Sigma, I1149; prepared from 500 mM stock in 25 mM ammonium bicarbonate) was included and alkylation was enabled to continue in the dark for 45 minutes at space temperature level. The reagents were eliminated and the gel pieces were cleaned 3 times with 200 µl of buffer B1 with 10-min vortexing actions. Gel pieces were then left to finish dryness with a SpeedVac system (SpeedVac concentrator, Thermo Scientific Savant SPD121P; cooled vapor trap, Thermo Scientific Savant RUT5105; air pump, Thermo Scientific OFP400).

The dried gel pieces were rehydrated and absorbed by including 10– 50 µl of trypsin to simply hardly cover the gel pieces. Trypsin (Thermo Fisher Scientific, 20233) was newly watered down to 5 ng µl− 1 in buffer A1 before usage. Following a 5-min incubation with trypsin, extra buffer A1 was included as required to guarantee that the gel pieces stayed completely immersed in option. Food digestion was enabled to continue over night at 37 ° C.

Peptides were drawn out by including 100 µl of buffer B2 (50% acetonitrile and 0.1% formic acid (v/v; Fisher Chemicals, A117-50) in HPLC-grade water). The samples were vortexed for 15 minutes and the peptide-rich supernatant was thoroughly moved to fresh low-retention tubes while preventing gel carryover. This extraction action was carried out 3 times in overall. The combined supernatants were centrifuged at 20,000 g (Eppendorf, 5417C) for 15 minutes to pellet any particles and ~ 400 µl of supernatant was moved into fresh tubes. The sample tubes were flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen for 2 minutes with covers open and after that positioned into a SpeedVac to dry entirely (about 2 h).

Peptides were then desalted with ZipTip OMIX C18 ideas (Agilent, A57003100). The dry peptide residues were reconstituted in 20 µl of buffer A2 (0.1% formic acid v/v in HPLC-grade water) and centrifuged at 20,000 g for 15 minutes. Next, 20 µl of supernatant was moved to a fresh tube. The C18 matrix was triggered by aspirating and disposing of 20 µl of buffer B2 and after that equilibrated by aspirating and disposing of 20 µl of buffer A2 4 times. The reconstituted peptide sample was bound to the resin through 8 aspirate– give cycles. The matrix was then cleaned with buffer A2 8 times to get rid of salts. The cleansed peptides were eluted straight into fresh low-retention tubes by aspirating and giving buffer B2 8 times. Constant wetting of the ZipTip was kept throughout the operation to avoid collapse of the matrix. The eluted samples were dried totally in a SpeedVac (about 30 minutes) and saved at − 80 ° C before MS analysis.

LC– MS/MS analysis

LC– MS/MS was performed on an Orbitrap Eclipse MS instrument (Thermo Fisher), geared up with an Easy LC 1200 UPLC system (Thermo Fisher). Peptides were very first caught utilizing a trapping column (Acclaim PepMap 100 C18 HPLC, 75-μm particle size, 2-cm bed length) and after that separated utilizing an AUR3-25075C18, 25CM Aurora series C18 emitter column (25 cm × 75 µm, 1.7 µm; IonOpticks). The circulation rate was 300 nl minutes− 1 Peptides were eluted by a gradient from 3% to 28% solvent B (80% acetonitrile and 0.1 % formic acid) over 106 minutes and from 28% to 44% solvent B over 15 minutes, followed by a brief wash (15 minutes) at 90% solvent B.

For information acquisition, precursor scan was set to m / z 375– 1,600 (resolution: 120,000; automated gain control (AGC): 200,000, optimum injection time: 50 ms, stabilized AGC target: 50%, RF lens: 30%) and the most extreme increase charged precursors were chosen for fragmentation (resolution: 15,000, AGC: 5 × 104 optimum injection time: 22 ms, seclusion window: 1.4 m / z stabilized AGC target: 100%, charge state: 2– 8, cycle time: 3 s). Peptides were fragmented with higher-energy accident dissociation with a stabilized accident energy of 27. Dynamic exemption was allowed for 30 s.

Information browse with MSFragger and Perseus

MS/MS spectra were browsed individually versus the Araport11 database A thaliana (https://www.arabidopsis.org/concatenated with decoy protein series utilizing the MSFragger 4.1 software application by consisting of O -methylation at tyrosine (delta mass of +14.01565) as a variable adjustment with default requirements to get label-free metrology strengths. The search engine result were examined individually in Perseus (variation 2.0.10.0). Processing was carried out in Perseus. MSFragger strengths were log2-changed. Just proteins that had at least 3 legitimate worths in a minimum of one group (wild type or proUBQ10:: sfGFP-MfnG) were kept. The staying missing out on MaxLFQ strengths were then imputed from a regular circulation that was downshifted by 1.8 and a width of 0.3 column-wise. A two-sample t -test was carried out with permutation-based ( n=250) incorrect discovery rate (FDR)=0.05 and S0=1.5.

Graphing and analytical analysis

Charts were built utilizing GraphPad Prism and Python plans. Circulation cytometry pie charts were built in the NovoExpress software application. Mann– Whitney and Kruskal– Wallis (two-tailed, no several contrast correction) significance tests were calculated in Prism. Relative IC50curves were suited Prism from mean worths.

Reporting summary

Additional info on research study style is offered in the Nature Portfolio Reporting Summary connected to this short article.

Data schedule

All plasmid products and bacterial stress will be offered through Addgene or the BacillusGenetic Stock. Series files, processed and unprocessed images and raw information are readily available in the Supplementary Information. An additional image set is hosted on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2170804286 The proteomics dataset is hosted on PRIDE under dataset identifier PXD084218 (ref.87 . Source information are supplied with this paper.

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Article CAS PubMed 19461752 PubMed Central Google Scholar 19461769 Zhong, V., Gevorgyan, A. & Brophy, J. Genetic code growth allows plant-directed control of bacterial activity( Source Data 1). 19461676 Zenodo https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21708042 (2026). 19461675 Zhong, V., Karunadasa, S., Xu, S.-L.

  • & Brophy, J. Genetic code growth makes it possible for plant-directed control of bacterial activity. 19461676 PRIDE 19461677 https://www.ebi.ac.uk/pride/archive/projects/PXD084218 19461752 (2026). 19461675 19462212 Download referrals 19461752 19461680 Acknowledgements 19461670 We thank partners who supplied plant seeds and bacterial pressures, particularly, J.-G. Kim and M. B. Mudgett at Stanford University for offering tomato seeds, C. Dervins and M. Kirst from the University of Florida for offering poplar cuttings and a proliferation procedure, H. Bais from the University of Delaware for supplying 19461676 B 19461677. subtilis UD1022 and D. Stork at Harvard University for offering B 19461677 subtilis 19461677 constructs and GCE procedures.
  • We thank C. Fromen and E. Sudduth for access to and training on the circulation cytometer at the University of Delaware. We thank N. Farny at Worcester Polytechnic Institute for supplying procedures and assistance on microbial extractions from soil. We thank Y. Dho, J. Liu, S. Niehs, D. Wengier and E. Sattely for access to and training on the lyophilizer and LC– MS at Stanford University, along with assistance on LC– MS experiment style and information analysis. We thank B. Caliando for the luciferin– agarose procedure. 19461675 Funding This work was supported by grants from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency( D24AC00011-05 to J.A.N.B. and A.M.K. ), the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research New Innovator Award (FF-NIA21-0000000060 to A.M.K.), the United States Department of Agriculture( 2021-33522-35807 to A.M.K.), the United States National Science Foundation (DGE-2146755 to V.Z. and A.A.J., NSF-GRFP 1940700 to A.M.F., NSF-IOS-CAREER 2340175 to J.A.N.B. and NSF-MCB-2027092 to A.M.K.), Siebel Scholar award to V.Z., the National Institutes of Health( T32 GM15466301 to A.G., S10OD030441 to S.-L.X.), the Carnegie Endowment Fund to the Carnegie MS Facility, Stanford Shriram Synthetic Biology for Sustainability seed grant( AY2025 to J.A.N.B.), the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface( 1019493.01 to J.A.N.B.) and a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub San Francisco Investigatorship( to J.A.N.B. ).
  • 19461675 19461680
    Author details 19461670 Author notes 19461675 19462222 These authors contributed similarly: Vivian Zhong, Michaela A. Jones. 19461769 19462212 Authors and Affiliations 19461672 Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA 19461675 Vivian Zhong, René Inckemann, Anna A. Johnson & Jennifer A. N. Brophy 19461675 19461769 Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA 19461672 Michaela A. Jones, Avaniek Cabales, Amanda M. Forti & Aditya M. Kunjapur Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA 19461675 19461672 Alice Gevorgyan 19461769 19461672 Department of Plant Biology and Carnegie Mass Spectrometry Facility, Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford, CA, USA Sumudu S. Karunadasa & Shou-Ling Xu 19461769 19461672 Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stanford, CA, USA Jennifer A. N. Brophy 19461769 19462212 19461672 Authors 19461675 19462222 Vivian Zhong Michaela A. Jones 19461769 Avaniek Cabales 19461679 19461678 Alice Gevorgyan 19461679 René Inckemann 19461678 Anna A. Johnson 19461679 19461769 19461678 Sumudu S. Karunadasa 19461679 Amanda M. Forti Shou-Ling Xu 19461679 Aditya M. Kunjapur 19461678 Jennifer A. N. Brophy 19461679 19461680 Contributions 19461672 V.Z., M.A.J., A.M.K. and J.A.N.B conceived the

    task and added to speculative style, information analysis and information analysis. V.Z. produced the transgenic

    19461676 Arabidopsis lines, measured the OMY production from plant lines, carried out the phenotypic characterization and carried out the image processing and analysis. V.Z. and A.G. created and carried out the plant– microbe cocultivation assays. A.G. added to the phenotypic characterization of transgenic 19461676 Arabidopsis 19461677 lines. M.A.J. and A.C. developed the bacterial pressures consisting of GCE innovation and carried out the initial characterization of bacterial stress. R.I. developed the bacterial pressures for hairy root improvement and created the tomato hairy roots. A.A.J. produced the poplar hairy root and added to the cocultivation assays. A.C. carried out the incorporation assays utilizing circulation cytometry in soil and with the crafted plant. S.S.K. and S.X. carried out the proteomics analysis to examine proteome-wide incorporation of OMY in 19461676 Arabidopsis 19461677 A.M.F. created and at first evaluated the constructs for O -methyl-transferase expression. V.Z. and J.A.N.B. composed the manuscript with contributions from M.A.J., A.C. and A.M.K. V.Z., M.A.J., A.C. and S.S.K. prepared the figures for the manuscript. 19461675 Corresponding authors Correspondence to Aditya M. Kunjapur or Jennifer A. N. Brophy. Ethics statements 19461670 Completing interests 19461672 V.Z., M.A.J., A.C., A.G., A.M.F., A.M.K. and J.A.N.B. are coinventors on submitted provisionary patent application no. PCT/US24/58838 associated to this work. A.M.K. is a cofounder of the industrial entity Nitro Biosciences. The other authors state no completing interests. 19461675 Peer evaluation

    19461670 Peer evaluation info 19461672 19461676 Nature Biotechnology 19461677 thanks Nediljko Budisa and the other, confidential, customer( s) for their contribution to the peer evaluation of this work. Peer customer reports are offered. Additional info 19461670 19461672 19461695 Publisher’s note 19461692 Springer Nature stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in released maps and institutional associations. 19461680 Extended information

    19462259 Extended Data Fig. 1 LC-MS detection of OMY and L-tyrosine in Nicotiana and Arabidopsis. ( a 19461692 Agent drawn out ion chromatography( EIC) traces at the m/z for OMY( left) and L-tyrosine( right )from LC-MS analysis of 19461676 Nicotiana benthamiana leaf extracts. Lyophilized leaf disc samples and requirements were prepared in 80% methanol, which acted as the blank for the LC-MS run. Unfavorable control was an uninfiltrated leaf.

    OMY 30 µM is the business requirement. ( 19461695 b 19461692 Agent drawn out ion chromatography (EIC) traces at the m/z for OMY (left) and L-tyrosine (right) from LC-MS analysis of metabolites drawn out from conditioned hydroponic development media. Lyophilized root exudate samples and requirements were prepared in 80% methanol, which functioned as the blank for the LC-MS run. OMY 5 µM is the industrial requirement. 19461672 Source information Extended Data Fig. 2 Additional controls for OMY-dependent luciferase expression in B. subtilis PY79 co-cultivated with Arabidopsis. 19461672 ( 19461695 a 19461692 Co-cultivation of B. subtilis 19461677 PY79 revealing the OMY-independent luciferase press reporter with wild-type Col-0( top, grey), proUBQ10:: sfGFP-MfnG( middle, pink) or proBRN1:: sfGFP-MfnG( bottom, orange )Arabidopsis seedlings.( b 19461692 Co-cultivation of wild-type B. subtilis PY79 with wild-type Col-0( top, grey), proUBQ10:: sfGFP-MfnG( middle, pink) or proBRN1:: sfGFP-MfnG( bottom, orange) Arabidopsis seedlings.( 19461695 c Co-cultivation of 19461676 B. subtilis PY79 revealing the OMY-independent luciferase press reporter including 2 stop codons with wild-type Col-0( grey), proUBQ10:: sfGFP-MfnG (pink), proBRN1:: sfGFP-MfnG( orange), or proXVE:: sfGFP-MfnG (blue )Arabidopsis seedlings. For proXVE:: sfGFP-MfnG experiments, 0 µM( top) or 20 µM (bottom) -estradiol was contributed to the bacteria-agar matrix to cause sfGFP-MfnG expression. In all panels, seedlings were moved onto bacterial-agar matrix at 8 days post-stratification and co-cultivated for 4 days before imaging. Luminescence( 30 s direct exposure, left) and brightfield (right) images were gathered with iBright imager. Colorbar represents luminescence strength( Fire LUT). Line charts reveal luminescence strength profile throughout the x-axis of the co-cultivation plate; lines link discrete points representing the vertically balanced pixel strength at each area. Bar charts reveal fold modification in luminescence strength, computed as the ratio of strength at each peak to the typical strength at nearby midpoints in between peaks; specific information points represent single peaks representing specific biological reproduces (n=5 seedlings for all genotypes other than the XVE; n=6 XVE seedlings). All bar plots suggest the typical fold modification with mistake bars revealing the interquartile variety. Panel (c) reveals uncropped variations of images provided in Figs. 2 and 4. Source information 19461675 19461680 19462259 Extended Data Fig. 3 Consistency of development phenotypes throughout independent T-DNA insertion lines. ( 19461695 a-b 19461692 Main root length ( a 19461692 and lateral root density ( b of independent homozygous proUBQ10:: sfGFP-MfnG (magenta) and proBRN1:: sfGFP-MfnG (yellow) T-DNA insertion lines. Plants were phenotyped at 8 days post-stratification. Dots represent private biological reproduces (Col0; n=11 seedlings, proUBQ10 lines 1 & & 2; n=11 seedlings, proBRN1 line 1; n=11 seedlings, proBRN1 lines 2-4; n=12 seedlings). Box plot main bars reveal the typical, hinges show the very first and 3rd quartiles, and hairs show minima and optimums. ( c-d 19461692 Main root length ( 19461695 c and lateral root density ( d 19461692 of independent T3 homozygous proXVE:: sfGFP-MfnG lines. Box plots reveal the typical of 21 plants phenotyped at 11 days post-stratification. Box plot hinges suggest the very first and 3rd quartiles. For all panels, significance groups were figured out utilizing two-sided Kruskal-Wallis tests with Dunn’s post-hoc analysis. Various letters show a statistically substantial distinction in between groups (α=0.05); groups sharing a minimum of one letter are not considerably various from each other. 19461675 Source information 19461680 Extended Data Fig. 4 B. subtilis development and protein expression with OMY. 19461672 ( a Development of PY79 revealing the amino-acyl tRNA synthetase and tRNA for ncAA incorporation in 1/2x MS media supplemented with 1.5% sucrose, 10 mM L-glutamate, and differing concentrations of OMY at 30 ° C. Each plot includes the development for 3 specific biological duplicates. The OMY concentration is suggested in the lower ideal corner of each plot. ( b 19461692 Development rates determined for curves in ( 19461695 a 19461692. Information reveal mean and basic discrepancy throughout 3 biological reproduces. Analytical significance was figured out utilizing one-way ANOVA and Dunn’s test versus the no OMY control (α=0.05). ( c, d 19461692 Fluorescence of 19461676 B. subtilis 19461677 PY79 ( c 19461692 or UD1022 ( d 19461692 revealing an OMY-dependent mNeonGreen press reporter throughout a variety of OMY concentrations in 1/2x MS media supplemented with 1.5% sucrose and 10 mM L-glutamate at 22 ° C. Fluorescence determined through circulation cytometry. Information are the mean of 3 reproduces stemmed from individually inoculated cultures that were grown and gathered concurrently. Mistake bars are s.d., and dots represent private information points. Analytical significance was examined utilizing a one method ANOVA with Tukey HSD posthoc test (starred. p-values for ( 19461695 c are 0.033; 0.05 µM OMY, 0.000000000002; 0.5 µM OMY, <

  • Engineered human Argonaute 2 for targeted C-to-U RNA base editing

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    Programmable small RNA–protein complexes such as CRISPR–Cas enable a single protein to serve as a flexible scaffold for diverse manipulations of nucleic acids. Small RNAs used as guides are stabilized by binding to their protein partner, offer unparalleled ease of target programming and can be chemically modified to improve their properties1. The sequence-specific manipulation of RNA by RNA-guided effectors has emerged as a ubiquitous mechanism for RNA regulation in prokaryotes and eukaryotes2,3. Cas13/type VI CRISPR systems and, more broadly, OMEGA-family proteins derived from prokaryotes have been imported into mammalian cells to generate programmable RNA-modulating proteins4,5,6. Catalytically active Cas13 proteins perform targeted RNA cleavage7, while nuclease-deactivated dCas13 proteins can be fused to deaminase enzymes to edit RNA sequences5,8. Fusion of dCas13 to different effectors enables systems that alter9 and sense10 post-transcriptional modifications, such as nucleobase methylation, and modulate mRNA splicing or translation11,12,13. In all cases, Cas13 serves as a short guide RNA (gRNA)-programmed domain that binds RNA targets to induce proximity to an effector domain, uniting sequence-specific targeting with functional modules.

    Despite their flexibility in function, these systems are limited by off-target activity, unknown interactions with regulatory machinery and the large size of Cas13 (refs. 14,15,16). Although genome mining17,18 and protein engineering19,20 continue to produce smaller variants, therapeutic applications of Cas-derived complexes encounter challenges with immunogenicity and delivery21,22,23. These challenges are compounded when targeting RNA because of the potential requirement for repeat dosing because of RNA turnover. As evidenced by Cas proteins, most biotechnologies for manipulating mammalian cells in a programmable fashion use some nonnative components, potentially creating homeostatic and immunogenic liabilities while sacrificing the evolutionary optimization of mammalian proteins. In contrast, reprogramming mammalian machinery to perform targeted RNA manipulations may be advantageous for biotechnological and therapeutic applications.

    Programmable RNA effectors with improved immune tolerance and size have been designed in a bottom-up fashion from pieces of mammalian proteins and oligo-RNAs24. Similar to Cas proteins, the interactions of these assemblies with the cellular environment and the immune system remain unknown. Removal of the components from their evolutionary context could remove advantageous properties and interactions while simultaneously disrupting those of the endogenous donor protein. As an alternative concept, identifying exogenous reprogramming agents that induce a range of functions by hijacking existing pathways could enable conservation of evolutionarily optimized properties while retaining benefits of compatibility with the host system. Mammalian cells have the ability to use small RNAs to program the Argonaute (AGO) family of proteins to downregulate a matching target2. A detailed understanding of the RNA interference (RNAi) pathway has enabled engineered small interfering RNA (siRNA) therapies that guide AGO2 to degrade a target transcript25. In principle, human AGO proteins and their native interactors already exhibit many of the advantageous properties of Cas proteins without the need to build a chassis to accomplish target and gRNA recognition. AGO2–gRNA complexes can efficiently sample cellular RNAs for targets26,27 and show enhanced binding kinetics and affinity compared to both Cas13 (refs. 28,29,30) and free RNA base pairing26,27. Despite the advances in harnessing AGO2 for downregulation-based therapeutics and unbiased screening of the transcriptome31, the intrinsic functions of AGO2 are limited. Here, we describe reprogramming of human AGO2 with guides designed to selectively enable the activity of a fused effector on an RNA target. Specifically, we develop a C-to-U RNA base editor termed AGO-led targeted editing of RNA (ALTER), which accesses dCas-like function from a human, small RNA-programmable scaffold.

    Loop-inducing gRNAs enable RNA editing by AGO2–APOBEC3A (A3A) fusions

    Extensive biological, structural and biochemical studies of AGO2 activity have elucidated gRNA parameters that lead to optimal downregulation28,29. Consequently, these observations provide a map to program AGO2 for nondegradative binding. Ideal targeting, nondegradative small RNA guides would fail to induce target cleavage and downregulation while retaining useful, evolutionarily optimized properties of RNA-loaded AGO2 such as dramatically increased rates of target binding, high and tunable target affinity26,28,29, the ability to bind despite target secondary structure32 and cellular regulation that promotes efficient target turnover to boost catalytic activity33,34.

    The anatomy of siRNAs can be divided into five distinct segments with different effects on target binding and cleavage (Fig. 1a). The 5′ base (g1) is anchored in a pocket of AGO2 (ref. 35). Complementarity is critical to target binding in the seed region (g2–g8) and increases affinity for the target in the supplementary region (g13–g16). Full complementarity in the central region (g9–g12) marginally reduces target affinity but is required for target cleavage. Lastly, base pairing in the tail region (g17 to the end of the siRNA) is largely inconsequential to target binding. Therefore, small RNAs with central region mismatches can be used to impart high-affinity binding to a complementary target without inducing target cleavage28,29. The majority of human microRNAs (miRNAs) use this binding mode to recruit repressive factors instead of slicing their targets36. However, most miRNAs target the 3′ untranslated region (UTR), sometimes with multiple binding sites, to effectively mediate downregulation37. Small RNA guides with strategic mismatches designed to target unique or non-3′UTR sites in a target transcript could allow AGO2 binding without potent downregulation. With these parameters, we sought to convert AGO2 to a platform for RNA manipulation.

    Fig. 1: ALTER design and guide optimization.

    a, The functional regions of siRNA and the impact of guide–target base pairing on target affinity and cleavage within each region. b, Schematic of ALTER editing. Guides are described by the variables x (loop size), y (position of target base in loop, 5′→3′, target RNA), i (5′ guide bases before the loop) and j (3′ guide bases after the loop). c, AlphaFold3 model of ALTER-1 bound to the EGFPY66H 14L8(11,10) guide and the targeted portion of the mRNA. Light blue, AGO2; dark blue, A3A; gray, (GGS)6 linker; green, gRNA; purple, target RNA; yellow, target base. d, Fluorescence data from HEK293T cells with stably integrated EGFPY66H testing guide-dependent editing through a loop-induction mechanism. MFI, mean fluorescence intensity. e, Tested guides inducing differently sized loops (x) with the target base maintained at a relatively consistent position within the loop. f, Tested guides inducing 14-nt loops with the target at different positions (y). g, Tested guides with the 14L8 loop at different positions, with respect to the guide (i, j). h, HEK293T cells containing stably integrated, doxycycline-inducible ALTER-1 used to compare transfection of guides as plasmid-encoded shRNAs or exogenous siRNA duplexes. Cells were treated with 10 µM doxycycline. All fluorescence readouts were measured by live-cell flow cytometry. Data are presented as the mean ± s.d. In d–h, data were derived from ≥3 biological replicates, with pairwise comparisons analyzed using an unpaired Welch’s t-test. Data points indicate replicates; bar heights indicate means. g1–g21, gRNA bases 1–21, counting from the 5′ end; nt, nontargeting guide; tgt, targeting guide; Dox, doxycycline.

    Source data

    APOBEC proteins are known to act on single-stranded RNAs (ssRNAs) to catalyze a deamination reaction that results in C-to-U sequence editing38,39. A3A selectively edits native substrates that position the target C in the 3′ portion of stem loops40. We envisioned that if AGO2 were fused to A3A, a central mismatch in the gRNA could be used to induce an ssRNA loop around a target position, creating a favorable editing substrate without downregulating the target transcript (Fig. 1b). The feasibility of this design was supported by modeling in AlphaFold3 (ref. 41), which showed correct folding of the protein fusion components and association of A3A with the unbound portion of the RNA target (Fig. 1c and Extended Data Fig. 1a). Previously developed C-to-U RNA base editors show potential to correct pathogenic T-to-C mutations42 but have not been applied therapeutically, likely as a function of immunogenicity and efficacy5,8.

    We considered three parameters in gRNA design that could dictate the conformation of the ALTER ternary complex: (1) the size of the induced ssRNA loop (x); (2) the position of the target C within that loop (y); and (3) loop orientation with respect to the gRNA (i, j) (Fig. 1b). We used EGFPY66H (ref. 43), a weakly blue fluorescent mutant of EGFP that is rescued by a C-to-U edit (Fig. 1d), as a reporter. We engineered HEK293T cells to constitutively express EGFPY66H to limit variation in reporter levels between experiments. Our initial protein construct consisted of wild-type (wt) AGO2 fused to A3AY132D (ALTER-1)44. Transfection of the reporter cells with ALTER-1 and gRNA 14L8(11,10), which induces a 14-nt ssRNA loop between g11 and g12 that places the target C at position 8 (ref. 8), induced significant fluorescence (Fig. 1d). Usage of a nontargeting guide, expression of A3A alone or exclusion of the guide, AGO2, A3A or the peptide linker in ALTER-1 did not lead to similar levels of fluorescence. These experiments support the proposed mechanism where ALTER-1 binds a target in a guide sequence-defined manner and induces editing. To assess knockdown caused by the 14L8(11,10) guide, we integrated destabilized GFP (ddGFP)45 into HEK293T cells and transfected nontargeting, fully complementary and 14L8(11,10) shRNAs. The 14L8(11,10) guide did not reduce ddGFP fluorescence compared to the nontargeting control, demonstrating a lack of activity stemming from endogenous AGO2 (Extended Data Fig. 1b). Overexpression of ALTER-1 with the 14L8(11,10) guide (abbreviated 14L8) led to a marginal decrease in fluorescence compared to the guide alone but no significant change compared to ALTER-1 overexpression with a nontargeting guide. These results support that loop-inducing guides lead to minimal AGO2-mediated knockdown of the target.

    To further probe the highlighted gRNA design parameters, we designed additional 21-nt guides. Guides that altered the loop size (x) while keeping the relative position of the target base consistent (that is, the relative distance from the 5′ and 3′ loop ends) showed that smaller loops led to an apparent lack of editing, while expansion of the loop size to 20 nt reduced editing efficiency (Fig. 1e and Extended Data Fig. 1c). Shifting placement of the target C (y) within a 14-nt loop showed similar editing when the target was at position 6, 7 or 8. Conversely, placing the target at position 9 or 10 led to pronounced decreases in fluorescence, potentially a result of steric shielding of the target from A3A by AGO2 (Fig. 1f and Extended Data Fig. 1d). Lastly, varying the position of the loop with respect to the gRNA (i, j) showed that shifting the loop toward the 5′ end of the gRNA, which disrupts complementarity in its seed region, reduced editing while shifting to the 3′ end led to a less pronounced decrease (Fig. 1g and Extended Data Fig. 1e). This overall binding mode, where all bases of the gRNA are complementary to the target but not contiguously, is atypical for native miRNAs. To examine canonical miRNA binding modes, we designed guides with one or three mismatches in the central region, both of which decreased editing activity (Extended Data Fig. 1f). Together, these data demonstrate that a novel, loop-inducing binding mode for gRNAs inside of AGO2 generates favorable substrates for A3A enzymes. Editing guides can be effectively delivered as both plasmid-encoded shRNAs and exogenous siRNA duplexes (Fig. 1h).

    ALTER activity can be improved by rational protein engineering

    Modifications that ablate nuclease activity2, reduce noncleaving target downregulation46 or minimize the size of the protein through domain truncation47 could be beneficial to AGO2 neofunction induction (Fig. 2a). AGO2 has been extensively characterized through mutational studies that perturb its RNAi-related functions. While loop-inducing guides bypass proposed requirements for target cleavage, residual slicing of target transcripts could impact ALTER editing efficiency. To first test whether complete removal of nuclease activity would lead to greater editing signal, we investigated whether the use of AGO isoforms, AGO1 and AGO3, which do not cleave targets with standard-length shRNAs, would improve ALTER48,49. While ALTER constructs using these isoforms led to guide-dependent editing, the resulting signal was significantly lower than ALTER-1 (Extended Data Fig. 2a), possibly because lack of nuclease activity can impact efficiency of guide loading25 or because of differences in guide structure preferences between AGO2 and AGO1/3 (refs. 49). Second, we manipulated AGO2 nuclease activity with several reported amino acid substitutions (Fig. 2b). D597A and D669A led to decreased editing activity while H634P did not significantly differ in activity from ALTER-1. Conversely, the Q633R substitution led to a pronounced increase in ALTER activity. This substitution has been reported to ablate slicing only in certain cases2,49 but may also increase ALTER activity by increasing electrostatic affinity to the negatively charged target RNA. Changes in AGO2’s charge are a known mechanism for regulating its affinity for target mRNAs33,34. AGO2 mutants that ablated GW182-binding to prevent miRNA-mediated target downregulation did not appreciably change ALTER activity, supporting that ALTER binding does not downregulate the target transcript by this mechanism (Supplementary Fig. 3)50. The double mutant AGO2F470V;F505V, located in the AGO2 MID domain (Fig. 2c, left), has been shown to reduce nonslicing downregulation of the target RNA, although the underlying mechanism remains unclear46,51,52,53,54. Incorporating this substitution into ALTER resulted in a modest decrease in signal but a more dramatic decrease in background signal from the editor with a nontargeting guide, potentially through decreased association with P-bodies (Fig. 2c, right). Proximity to mRNAs in P-bodies might lead to increases in background and signal, which are both removed by AGO2F470V;F505V. Together, these efforts identified substitutions in AGO2 that could increase editing signal and lower background activity.

    Fig. 2: Engineering ALTER with known functional substitutions of AGO2 and A3A.

    a, Relevant properties of AGO2 and A3A that can be modulated with known substitutions. Areas with relevant residues are highlighted. b, Effect of nuclease-inactivating AGO2 mutants in ALTER. c, Left, the AGO2 double mutant F470V;F505V in the MID domain may reduce nonslicing target downregulation and localization of AGO2 to P-bodies (PDB 9CMP)78. Right, effect of AGO2F470V;F505V on activity compared to the nt guide when used in ALTER. d, Left, AlphaFold3 model of AGO2 lacking the PAZ domain. Right, effect of AGO2∆PAZ in ALTER. e, Effect of combined AGO2 mutants on ALTER editing efficiency. f, The effects of different A3A mutants on ALTER (PDB 5SWW)79. g, Left, table summarizing AGO2 and A3A substitutions in ALTERs 1–5. Right, effect of combinatorial AGO2 and A3A substitutions on the editing activity of ALTERs 1–4. h, Reactivity of chimeric A3AddA1 in ALTER-5 in diverse XC substrate contexts. A3AddA1, a chimeric APOBEC where the deaminase domain of A1 is grafted into A3A. All editing readouts are live-cell flow cytometry fluorescence measurements taken after transfection of EGFPY66H-HEK293T cells with plasmids encoding ALTER and a gRNA. Data are presented as the mean ± s.d. In b–h, data were derived from three biological replicates, with pairwise comparisons analyzed using an unpaired Welch’s t-test. Data points indicate replicates; bar heights indicate means. NS, not significant.

    Source data

    Smaller constructs can benefit delivery with state-of-the-art vectors such as AAVs, which has led to numerous efforts toward Cas miniaturization through genome mining17,18 or truncation19,20. We reasoned that thorough characterization of AGO2 activity in RNAi studies might enable rational truncation of AGO2. Removal of the 127-aa PAZ domain of AGO2 (Fig. 2d, left) has been shown to reduce target cleavage and downregulation while maintaining the ability to load small RNAs and bind target transcripts47. Incorporating AGO2∆PAZ into an ALTER editor led to a twofold increase in signal from edited EGFPY66H and a simultaneous decrease in background signal with the nontargeting guide (Fig. 2d, right). Modeling of AGO2∆PAZ with AlphaFold3 (ref. 41) supported minimal impact on the structure of the other AGO2 domains (Fig. 2d, left).

    In combination, some AGO2 modifications showed additive effects (Fig. 2e). When compared by fusion to A3AY132D, the triple-mutant AGO2F470V;F505V;Q633R led to a small increase in editing activity and a significant drop in background activity compared with wtAGO2. AGO2∆PAZ;Q633R led to both significantly increased signal and decreased background. Conversely, all AGO2 mutants with both the ∆PAZ modification and the F470V;F505V double mutant did not have detectable editing activity (Extended Data Fig. 2b).

    Further efforts to enhance on-target editing activity were conducted by mutating the A3A portion of ALTER. Mutations of A3A impacting the residues that interact with the nucleic acid substrate have been shown to modulate activity and selectivity for RNA over DNA. ALTER-1 used human A3AY132D, reported to limit off-target activity in both DNA and RNA Cas base editors8,44. Use of wtA3A in ALTER led to a modest increase in editing signal without increased background as gauged with the nontargeting guide. We also tested A3A substitutions known to have increased activity on RNA and negligible activity on DNA (Fig. 2f)55. While both led to increased background activity, the A3AK30R;Y132D mutant also led to a significant increase in targeted editing.

    Having identified substitutions in both proteins of ALTER able to modulate on-target and background activity, we investigated simultaneous mutations of both domains in single editors (Fig. 2g). AGO2F470V;F505V;Q633R–A3AY132D (ALTER-2) showed minimal signal with the nontargeting guide and higher on-target activity than ALTER-1. ALTER-3, AGO2∆PAZ;Q633R–wtA3A, also showed decreased background with higher editing activity than ALTER-2. Usage of A3AK30R;Y132D instead of wtA3A in ALTER-3 greatly reduced its activity and caused a pronounced increase in background signal (Supplementary Fig. 23). Lastly, AGO2F470V;F505V;Q633R–A3AK30R;Y132G produced lower background activity than ALTER-3 with a nearly twofold increase in editing, resulting in the optimized editor ALTER-4.

    Human A3A is limited by strict selectivity for UC sequence context and we investigated whether we could expand the range of editable contexts within the ALTER framework. Other human APOBECs have different selectivity; for example, A1 requires an AC context for deamination39. However, incorporation of A1 into ALTER did not result in editing of a recoded EGFPY66H reporter (Extended Data Fig. 2c,d). Alternatively, sequence specificity can also be achieved in APOBEC hybrids by grafting together domains from different isoforms. Incorporating the deaminase domain of A1 into A3A (A3AddA1) has been shown to produce an active GC deaminase56, which we used in AGO2F470V;F505V;Q633R–A3AddA1 (ALTER-5). ALTER-5 showed efficient editing in a GC variant of the EGFPY66H reporter and significant activity with an AC reporter (Fig. 2h; note that fluorescence signals result from different cell lines bearing the different recoded EGFPY66H variants). While ALTER-5 demonstrates that different effector domains can be fused to AGO2 to change function, we conducted further characterization with ALTER-4 because of its high activity and selectivity for UC targets and human components that would minimize immunogenicity.

    To further probe the interaction of guide design and protein construct, additional gRNA designs were tested across ALTER-1–ALTER-4. These designs can be categorized as (1) guides with mismatches in the 3′ region that could potentially retain binding affinity and circumvent target-directed miRNA degradation (TDMD; Extended Data Fig. 2e–h)57,58 or (2) guides that varied the loop size while holding either the 5′ or 3′ portion of 14L8 consistent (Extended Data Fig. 2i–l). These experiments revealed three guides that conveyed higher editing activity with ALTER-1. Specifically, 14L8 with mismatches at g12 and g13 (14L8(12–13 mm)), a guide with the same 5′ region as 14L8 that induced a smaller loop (12L6) and a guide with the same 3′ region that induced a larger loop (18L12) all led to a ~2.5-fold increase in activity in the EGFPY66H editing assay. Additional mismatches in the 3′ region of the guide that may attenuate TDMD removed editing efficacy; thus, the impact of TDMD on ALTER efficacy was not apparent. Guide activity trends were inconsistent with ALTER-3 and ALTER-4. For ALTER-3, all three of the guides that increased activity with ALTER-1 were less effective than 14L8. For ALTER-4, 18L12 was less effective, and 14L8(12–13 mm) and 12L6 were more effective but by a reduced margin compared to ALTER-1 (Extended Data Fig. 2m,n). Together, these data establish a prospective set of initial test guide designs for editing experiments that could lead to enhanced activity.

    ALTER is a highly active editor of endogenous RNA targets

    The two classes of Cas-fusion C-to-U RNA base editors are typified by RNA editing for specific C-to-U exchange (RESCUE)59 and C-to-U RNA editor (CURE)8. RESCUE consists of dRanCas13b fused to an engineered adenosine deaminase acting on RNA (ADAR) variant that can deaminate both cytidine and adenosine (Fig. 3a, right), whereas CURE is a dPspCas13b–A3AY132D fusion (Fig. 3a, left). We directly compared the editing abilities of ALTER, RESCUE-S and CURE-N in HEK293T-EGFPY66H cells. CURE-N showed minimal fluorescence signal, while RESCUE-S was threefold less active than ALTER-4 (Fig. 3b and Extended Data Fig. 3a). We confirmed editing of transcripts by sequencing (Fig. 3c) and qPCR confirmed that no editor led to significant EGFPY66H transcript knockdown (Extended Data Fig. 3b). These data revealed a linear relationship between rescued fluorescence of the EGFPY66H cells and C-to-U editing percentage quantified by sequencing analysis (Extended Data Fig. 3c–f). The activity differences between editors suggest that AGO2-based constructs may have complementary or superior activity compared to dCas fusions.

    Fig. 3: Comparison of ALTER to Cas13-based RNA editors and ALTER editing of endogenous transcripts.

    a, Cas13 RNA base editors CURE (left) and RESCUE (right). Schemes showing target binding modes (top) and editor components (bottom). b, Fluorescence of HEK293T cells stably expressing EGFPY66H driven by the EF1α promoter transfected with different editors and their corresponding targeting guides. ALTER editors use the 14L8 guide unless otherwise indicated, measured by live-cell flow cytometry. c, Sequencing data matched to b showing the percentage of EGFPY66H transcripts edited at C199; raw % C-to-U was corrected by dividing the raw value by the fraction of cells transfected. d, Sequencing data showing % C-to-U editing of endogenous transcripts in wtHEK293T cells transfected with different editors and their corresponding guides. e, qPCR data showing relative transcript levels in endogenous editing experiments. Transcripts were normalized to the mean nt level for each editor. f, Left, schemes showing the components of ALTER-4 and ALTER-4N. Middle, C-to-U editing in HEK293T cells transfected with different editors. Right, qPCR data showing relative MALAT1 transcript level. g, C-to-U editing of PPIB (left) and qPCR data (right) showing relative transcript levels in HEK293T cells transfected with plasmids encoding RESCUE-S or ALTER-5 against a GC target. Data are presented as the mean ± s.d. In b–g, data were derived from three biological replicates, with pairwise comparisons analyzed using an unpaired Welch’s t-test. Data points indicate replicates; bar heights indicate means. Target positions by gene, transcript and location: PPIB ENST00000300026 C90 (UC), SMARCA4 ENST00000647230 C503, ACTB ENST00000646664 C309, TYMS ENST00000323274 C876, MALAT1 ENST00000534336 C1053 and PPIB ENST00000300026 C92 (GC).

    Source data

    We next assessed the target scope of ALTER on a panel of endogenous transcripts with corresponding 14L8 guides. In previous studies, PPIB C90 was shown to be more effectively edited by CURE-N than RESCUE-S8,59. We also observed this trend and found that ALTER-4 showed the highest level of editing (Fig. 3d and Extended Data Fig. 4a,b). SMARCA4 C503 was more effectively edited by RESCUE-S than CURE-N8,59, with ALTER-4 showing comparable editing to RESCUE-S (Fig. 3d and Extended Data Fig. 4c,d). This suggests that the activity and selectivity of fusion protein editors are likely not solely determined by their effector domains. We also used ALTER-4 to edit ACTB C309 and TYMS C876, two other sites that RESCUE and CURE have been shown to edit effectively8,59. In both cases, ALTER-4 led to significantly higher levels of C-to-U editing than either Cas-based editor (Fig. 3d and Extended Data Fig. 4e–h). For all endogenous targets, we also assessed whether ALTER-4 led to knockdown of the targeted transcript and found any reductions in transcript level to be similar to those caused by the dCas editors (Fig. 3e).

    Reduced transcript abundance has been reported with dCas13-based constructs previously60 and this depletion effect may reflect a general consequence of nonnative interactions between a transcript and an ectopically expressed protein. In addition to 14L8, we tested 14L8(12–13 mm) and 12L6 guides for ALTER-4 editing of TYMS and PPIB (Extended Data Fig. 5a). Contrary to the activity of similar guides on EGFPY66H, 14L8(12–13 mm) led to comparable PPIB editing to 14L8 while 12L6 decreased activity, whereas the inverse was true for TYMS (Extended Data Figs. 2m,n and 5b). These discrepancies in the performance of guide designs between different targets suggest that optimal guides depend on both the target and editor. In total, ALTER-4 showed comparable or higher activity compared to the Cas editors across a panel of endogenous targets without enhanced target knockdown.

    To assess whether ALTER could access nuclear transcripts, we targeted the nuclear lncRNA MALAT1. Initial experiments with ALTER-4 showed minimal editing at MALAT1 C1053, suggesting that ALTER may be largely excluded from the nucleus. However, addition of a nuclear localization sequence to the N terminus of ALTER-4 (ALTER-4N) led to a pronounced increase in MALAT1 editing without target knockdown (Fig. 3f and Extended Data Fig. 4i–j). While activity remained lower than CURE-N8, which has been engineered with both viral nuclear localization sequences and nuclear export sequences, it may be possible to further optimize for nuclear localization or shuttling. ALTER-4N did not exhibit differences in editing activity of EGFPY66H compared to ALTER-4 (Extended Data Fig. 3g).

    We also examined whether ALTER-5 could edit endogenous GC targets. We tested editing at PPIB C92 (which is preceded by G)59 and found the editing level to be significantly higher than RESCUE-S and that both editors had similar effects on transcript abundance (Fig. 3g). No CURE variant has been shown to have editing activity in sequence contexts other than UC8.

    Examining C-to-U changes across the sequencing amplicons for each target revealed two types of potential bystander edits within a target transcript: (1) distal sites that are already primed for A3A editing but may incur further editing with induced proximity (for example, EGFPY66H position 56; Extended Data Fig. 3h,i) or (2) sites in or proximal to the ALTER-induced loop (for example, TYMS position −5; Extended Data Fig. 4g,h). When TYMS was edited with a 12L6 guide (Extended Data Fig. 5a), we observed comparable editing at TYMS C876 to that observed with the 14L8 guide and dramatically reduced bystander editing at C871 (Extended Data Fig. 5d,e). Therefore, guide design can be used to both optimize on-target editing and minimize bystander editing.

    Assessment of transcriptome-wide off-target activity

    As AGO2 is a native human protein and the core scaffold of ALTER, off-target C-to-U editing and differential expression effects could potentially result from both unintended guide interactions and perturbations of endogenous RNAi61. To quantify transcriptome-wide editing activity, we compared mRNA-seq data from cells treated with PPIB-targeted or TYMS-targeted ALTER-4 to a NanoLuc transfection control. Targeting PPIB, we observed only 518 high-confidence off-target edits, which was fourfold lower than the corresponding numbers reported for RESCUE-S and CURE-N8. TYMS-targeted ALTER-4 led to a higher number of off-targets, indicating that the magnitude of off-target editing may be highly guide and target dependent (Fig. 4a and Extended Data Fig. 6a–c). Lowering the amount of transfected ALTER-4 resulted in a clear dose response in TYMS editing (Extended Data Fig. 5g–h). Notably, treating cells with a reduced dose of ALTER-4, which provides comparable TYMS editing to a full dose of CURE-N or RESCUE-S (Extended Data Fig. 5i), led to a 25-fold drop in the number of off-target edits (Fig. 4a and Extended Data Fig. 6a–c). This experiment demonstrates that, even when using a guide prone to increased off-target editing, when normalized to target editing efficiency, ALTER can result in substantially reduced off-targets. We mapped each off-target edit site (position 0) to corresponding expressed transcripts and analyzed their RNA contexts. There is a clear consensus sequence from −4 to +1 and preference for stem-loop secondary structures62, matching previously described characteristics of A3A editing hotspots (Fig. 4b–d and Extended Data Fig. 6d–e)63. This result suggests that ALTER-4 off-targets predominantly arise from collateral A3A activity, which is further supported by our finding that 73% of ALTER-4 off-target edits also appear when A3A is overexpressed, alone or as a component of a CURE editor (Extended Data Fig. 6f–h).

    Fig. 4: Quantification of transcriptome-wide effects of ALTER.

    a, Quantified off-targets identified in RNA-seq data from HEK293T cells transfected with plasmids encoding each editor. In the ALTER-4-low condition, cells were transfected with 0.5 µg of plasmid instead of 3 µg. RNA-seq data for A3A overexpression, CURE editors and RESCUE-S obtained from BioProject PRJNA635732 (ref. 8). b, Nucleotide frequency in a 21-base context window around each ALTER-4-PPIB C-to-U off-target indicating a CCAUCG consensus sequence in the −4 to +1 window. c, Frequency of characters in dot-bracket encoding of the minimum free energy secondary structure for each 21-base context window shows enrichment of stem-loop structures. d, Top, scheme of the consensus sequence and structural features of the ALTER-4 C-to-U off-target sites. Bottom, consensus sequence and dot-bracket notation of the consensus structure. e, Frequency of known miRNA targets64 in expressed genes and off-targets. f, Counts of DESeq2 assayed genes and DEGs. g, Frequency of endogenous miRNA targets in all assayed genes and DEGs. h, Frequency of C-to-U off-targets in assayed genes and DEGs.

    Source data

    To further examine the origin of off-targets, we searched our RNA-seq data for evidence that loading of endogenous miRNA or promiscuous guide binding promotes ALTER-4 engagement and editing of alternative transcripts. The frequency of genes known to be regulated by miRNA64 was increased in ALTER-4, CURE and RESCUE off-target edits compared to all expressed genes (Fig. 4e). At the transcript level, we aligned seed-recognition motifs25 of known miRNAs and the respective65 gRNAs to expanded sequence contexts for each off-target edit. While we did observe an increase in binding sites per transcript for ALTER-4 off-target edits compared to random positions in expressed transcripts, the same was also true for CURE (Extended Data Fig. 7a–f,m–r). The consistency between ALTER and CURE makes it unlikely that these metrics reflect miRNA-directed edits. When the analysis of gRNA-binding sites was restricted to unique off-targets of a specific editor, the increase in alignment rate over a random sample was insignificant for CURE but more pronounced for ALTER-4 (Extended Data Fig. 7s–x). Similarly, examining the frequency of guide–target sites at each position of the context window showed a decrease in guide alignment frequency proximal to the off-target edit and increased frequency in the 3′ adjacent region for ALTER only (Extended Data Fig. 8a–d). These observations may reflect ALTER off-target edits that result from induced proximity because of off-target guide binding but only a small fraction of ALTER-4 off-target edits have proximal gRNA-binding sites (Extended Data Fig. 8g–l).

    We analyzed differential mRNA expression across editors and found that ALTER-4 results in higher numbers of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) compared to those reported for Cas-based editors (Fig. 4f). However, gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA)66 of all assayed genes did not reveal any significantly dysregulated pathways (Supplementary Tables 1–4) and Gene Ontology enrichment analysis of DEGs did not reveal strong biases (Supplementary Fig. 20). We further assessed whether known miRNA target transcripts64 were disproportionately represented in the DEGs. The frequency was unchanged between DEGs and all assayed transcripts when using the PPIB guide but somewhat elevated in upregulated DEGs when using the TYMS guide (Fig. 4g). It is possible that this discrepancy is because of the sequestering of native miRNA into overexpressed ALTER. However, CURE-N, RESCUE-S and A3A overexpression show similar frequency increases, albeit with smaller sample sizes of DEGs. ALTER-2 and ALTER-3 did not demonstrate dramatically different numbers of DEGs or enrichment of miRNA targets in DEGs compared to ALTER-4 (Extended Data Fig. 9). Additionally, we did not observe a high percentage of C-to-U off-targets within DEGs caused by ALTER-4, suggesting that off-target edits and DEGs largely arise from separate mechanisms (Fig. 4h).

    Taken together, these observations support that neither ALTER-4 C-to-U off-target edits nor ALTER-4-associated DEGs primarily arise from crossloading of endogenous miRNAs into ALTER. We also identified that a small fraction of off-target edits result from guide-mediated off-target binding and that expression of ALTER-4 and the guide does not lead to systemic dysregulation of the miRNA regulome. Similar sequence–structure consensus was observed for all A3A-based editors and A3A overexpression but not for RESCUE-S (Extended Data Fig. 6i–n and Supplementary Fig. 6). Furthermore, ALTER results in significantly fewer C-to-U off-targets than A3A overexpression. Thus, the majority of ALTER off-target edits likely result from A3A activity independent of AGO2, A3A off-targets are seemingly reduced by fusion to AGO2 and the ratio of on-target to off-target editing can be optimized through straightforward dosage control.

    Machine-learning-assisted deimmunization of ALTER

    As ALTER is based on intact human proteins, we assessed whether sequence engineering could further reduce predicted immunogenicity without compromising activity. We focused our immunogenicity assessment on major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II presentation as activation of cytotoxic T cells requires CD4+ T cell assistance and prior work indicates that evasion of MHC II-restricted antigen presentation is critical for long-term persistence of engineered or therapeutic human cells. We analyzed ALTER constructs for predicted nonnative peptide presentation using MHC analyzer with recurrent integrated architecture (MARIA), a deep neural network trained on mass-spectrometry-derived antigen data and conventional binding measurements to predict MHC class II presentation67. MARIA has previously been applied to reduce predicted immunogenicity of engineered human proteins68. We computationally generated all 15-mer peptide tiles across a given ALTER variant that contained either an amino acid that differed from the native protein or a junction between two native proteins. These peptides were screened with MARIA and considered likely to be presented if they exceeded the 63rd percentile of total peptide scores, representing a false omission rate (FOR) of 0.01. Similar analyses were performed for CURE-N and RESCUE-S for comparison. As expected, the Cas13-based editors exhibited substantially more likely-presented peptides compared to ALTER editors (Fig. 5a and Extended Data Fig. 10a).

    Fig. 5: Computational assessment of immunogenicity and delivery of ALTER with enveloped particles.

    a, MARIA presentation percentile of nonhuman peptides resulting from different editors and counts of number of peptides exceeding the confidence threshold and likely to be presented by MHC class II. b, Cumulative fraction of over-threshold peptides from ALTER-1 and ALTER-4 grouped by location of origin. c, Peptide sequences showing the deimmunizing substitutions in ALTER-4M (top) and MARIA presentation percentile for linker-derived peptides from ALTER-4 and ALTER-4M (bottom). d, Fluorescence, measured by live-cell flow cytometry, of HEK293T cells stably expressing EGFPY66H transfected with plasmids encoding ALTER-1 with different linkers and the 14L8 guide. e, Bottom, MARIA presentation percentile for junction-derived peptides from ALTER-4 (no linker) and ALTER-4M (no linker). Top, peptide sequences showing the deimmunizing mutations in ALTER-4M (no linker). f, Editing activity in HEK293T cells stably expressing EGFPY66H transfected with plasmids encoding ALTER-4, ALTER-4 (no linker) and their deimmunized variants. g, VLPs can be produced with loaded ALTER RNPs. Sites where the MMLV-Gag-ALTER linker is cleaved by the viral protease are indicated with dashed red lines. h, Percentage of cells positive for fluorescence after treatment with ALTER-4-containing VLPs compared to transfection with an ALTER-4-encoding plasmid. i, Percentage of cells positive for green fluorescence after treatment with an ALTER-4-encoding AAV or transfection with the corresponding plasmid. Data in d,f,h,i are presented as the mean ± s.d. of three biological replicates, with pairwise comparisons analyzed using an unpaired Welch’s t-test. Data points indicate replicates; bar heights indicate means.

    Source data

    For ALTER-1 and ALTER-4, most peptides above the MARIA threshold originated from the (GGS)6 linker (Fig. 5b). As substitutions within linker peptides are less likely to reduce activity than substitutions within functional domains, we focused on mitigating this major source of predicted immunogenicity. We found that five substitutions in the linker region (G200C, G201L, S202C, G210L and G216C) eliminated predicted nonnative peptide presentation associated with the linker region in ALTER-4 (Fig. 5c). Having identified the linker as a potential focal point of immunogenic liability, we tested the use of a variety of linkers in ALTER. We assayed different lengths of flexible (GGS) linkers, helical (EAAAK) linkers69, the XTEN-16 (SGSETPGTSESATPES) linker70 and a construct where A3A is fused to AGO2 without a linker. In our EGFPY66H assay, we found that all constructs gave comparable activity (Fig. 5d). This is likely because of the first 35 residues of the AGO2 beam domain acting as a flexible linker because of a lack of defined structure (Extended Data Fig. 10b)71. We identified two minimally disruptive substitutions to AGO2 (M1C and Y2W) that eliminated predicted junction-associated nonnative MHC II peptide presentation from no-linker ALTER-4 (Fig. 5e and Extended Data Fig. 10c). The deimmunized ALTER-4 analog, ALTER-4M, resulted in only slightly decreased GFP editing, while the no-linker variants were both indistinguishable in activity from the original ALTER-4 (Fig. 5f). These results indicate that ALTER constructs can be systematically optimized to reduce predicted immunogenicity and reveal an inherent compatibility of AGO2 with effector domains, requiring minimal artificial linker engineering.

    ALTER can be delivered as an RNP or gene

    Translation of several Cas-based technologies has been challenged by their size compatibility with state-of-the-art enveloped delivery technologies. While advances in protein engineering to identify smaller constructs and optimization of intact ribonucleoprotein complex delivery have enabled breakthroughs, nucleic acid editing is still limited by delivery capabilities. Virus-like particles (VLPs) can deliver recombinant proteins to cells by linking them to viral capsid proteins with cleavable linkers72. We formulated VLPs such that ALTER would be loaded with guide and packaged into the VLP within producing cells, eliminating the need for guide expression in target cells (Fig. 5g)73. The resultant VLPs delivered active ALTER RNPs to cells expressing only the stably integrated EGFPY66H reporter, resulting in a comparable frequency of editing to that observed with transient transfection (Fig. 5h), albeit with lower signal magnitude (Extended Data Fig. 10d).

    Adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors enable the delivery of single constructs within a 5-kb size limit and are clinically validated vectors for multiple gene therapies74. We designed AAVs that incorporated both the ALTER protein fusion and guide into a single viral vector75. Treatment of EGFPY66H reporter cells with these AAVs showed effective editing with only a modest reduction in cell turn-on compared to transfection (Fig. 5i), albeit with lower signal magnitude (Extended Data Fig. 10e). Together, these results suggest that current technologies can deliver functional ALTER both as an RNP complex and encoded within a gene, supporting multiple potential avenues for therapeutic application of AGO2-based RNA-manipulating systems.

    Discussion

    Cas and ISC proteins have led to programmable RNA effectors with a variety of functions7,8,9,10,11,12,13,18 but are not evolutionarily optimized for function in human cells, creating translational challenges from immune responses and deleterious intracellular effects that can impact performance14,15,16. These shortcomings can be addressed by building similar programmable effectors from intact human proteins. By fusing AGO2 to a human RNA effector protein and engineering the AGO2–gRNA to prevent target slicing28,29, we showed that AGO2 can be redirected from RNAi to enable the function of the fused domain. We demonstrate ALTER as a proof of concept, in which a loop-inducing guide that does not lead to substantial target downregulation is used to force the target transcript into an optimal conformation for editing by a fused deaminase. C-to-U editing has the potential to correct a number of pathologies42 and, along with Cas-based systems, has been explored with PUF protein scaffolds56 or engineered long RNA oligo-guided ADAR2 mutants76. In contrast to these approaches, ALTER features reduced immunogenic liability because of minimal fusions of modified proteins and usage of only short RNAs as guides68, improved ability to sample for targets26, enhanced target binding kinetics and affinity27,28,29, undetectable activity of A3AK30R;Y132G on DNA55 and a lack of A-to-I off-targets compared to engineered ADAR-based technologies8,59,76. ALTER does not require nuclear entry to achieve effective editing, further minimizing risk to DNA. Engineering of ALTER benefitted from a wealth of studies carried out on human RNAi, enabling rapid identification of modifications that improved editing, reduced nonspecific background and reduced construct size. These results suggest that different AGO2 modifications and guide designs are optimal for editing compared to RNAi. This observation may enable insights into AGO2 activity and regulation that might not be gained from studying RNAi.

    Some functions that can be effectively mediated with Cas-based effectors may not be accessible using only human proteins and the use of ALTER may result in a higher rate of DEGs than Cas-based editors. Initiating protein engineering efforts from human starting points to access these activities could bypass these challenges and DEGs may be further suppressed by discovering mutations that are deleterious to RNAi but beneficial to AGO2-based effectors such as ALTER. Our analysis of immunogenic liability with MARIA67 supports a substantially lower rate of MHC II-presented exogenous peptides with modified AGO2 compared to Cas. Further efforts to expand AGO2-based effectors will continue to benefit from engineering routes informed by existing knowledge of RNAi. While a subset of the AGO interactome might pose challenges for biotechnological applications, we demonstrated that targeted substitutions may abolish undesired activities while retaining productive features. The ability to achieve this balance for a given application is likely to be context and potentially target dependent.

    ALTER can be delivered as an RNP or gene but the use of VLP and AAV vectors still presents immunogenic risks74. Continued advances in deimmunization of these and other protein delivery technologies may change the primary immunogenic risk from the delivery vector to the protein cargo itself. While we were unable to identify specific impacts of TDMD on ALTER in the current work, under conditions where ALTER constructs are present in low abundance, TDMD could impact editing efficiency or editor abundance. Both this work and studies of Cas-based RNA effectors suggest that determinants of cellular activity are target dependent, multifactorial and difficult to predict. Indeed, different and sometimes complementary activities between ALTER and Cas base editors were observed in this study. As with other programmable RNA manipulation technologies, the design of optimal ALTER gRNAs is likely to be target and context specific. While we have identified a set of reasonable starting points for guide design, future high-throughput examination of many guides and targets will likely reveal optimized guide design principles77. Future RNA manipulation applications are likely to benefit from an increased array of tools that can be surveyed to induce the desired effect. Reprogramming AGO2 expands the scope of modular targeting domains, guided by small RNAs, that can be used in RNA-manipulating technologies and shows that they can be built entirely out of existing human proteins.

    Methods

    Cell lines

    Adherent cells were cultured on 10-cm or 15-cm plates in a humidified incubator kept at 37 °C and 5% CO2. HEK293T cells were obtained from the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC; CRL-3216), authenticated by ATCC before distribution and cultured in DMEM supplemented with 10% FBS and 1% penicillin–streptomycin. Maintenance and subculturing of cells were conducted in accordance with ATCC guidelines.

    Plasmid generation

    All plasmids were generated by Gibson assembly cloning or restriction cloning. For Gibson assembly, relevant DNA segments were amplified from plasmid templates by PCR with Q5 high-fidelity 2× master mix (New England Biolabs), using primers that were commercially sourced from Integrated DNA Technologies, and PCR products were separated by gel electrophoresis on a 1% agarose gel run at 120 V for 30 min before gel extraction with the Zymoclean gel DNA recovery kit (Zymo Research) according to the manufacturer’s protocol. PCR products were pooled in amounts according to the manufacturer’s protocol and assembled with NEBuilder HiFi DNA assembly 2× master mix (New England Biolabs).

    For restriction cloning, the relevant ALTER backbone was linearized with BbsI-HF (New England Biolabs) and purified by gel electrophoresis and extraction, as described above. Primers were designed and were annealed at a concentration of 10 µM each. The annealing reaction was diluted 1:10 and then ligated with T4 Ligase (New England Biolabs) according to the manufacturer’s protocol.

    First, 1 µl of the Gibson assembly or ligation mixture was added to a 10-µl aliquot of Stellar chemically competent cells (Takara) and incubated on ice for 1 h. Cells were transformed according to the manufacturer’s protocol then plated onto an agar plate with 100 µg ml−1 ampicillin. The plate was then incubated at 37 °C overnight to allow colony formation.

    Next, 5-ml cultures of LB broth containing 100 µg ml−1 ampicillin were inoculated with single colonies and incubated at 37 °C overnight. Bacteria were pelleted by centrifuging at 3,000g for 5 min. Plasmids were purified from bacteria with the Quick-DNA Miniprep Plus kit (Zymo Research).

    Representative plasmid sequences are included in Supplementary Table 5. ALTER guide sequences used in this study are in Supplementary Table 6. RESCUE-S and CURE-N guides used in this study are found in Supplementary Table 7.

    Stable cell line generation with Sleeping Beauty transposase

    Gene cassettes for stable integration were cloned into plasmids flanked by Sleeping Beauty transposase recognition sites80. Representative sequences are included in Supplementary Table 5. On day 0, a six-well cell culture plate was seeded with 300,000 HEK293T cells per well. On day 1, cells were transfected with jetPRIME transfection reagent in a transfection mixture containing 2 µg of plasmid, 0.2 µg of Sleeping Beauty transposase plasmid (Addgene 34879), 4 µl of jetPRIME reagent and 200 µl of jetPRIME buffer according to the manufacturer’s protocol. On day 2, medium was exchanged. On day 3, the cells were lifted with trypsin and replated into 10-cm plates with 10 ml of total volume containing 250 µg ml−1 hygromycin or 2 µg ml−1 puromycin. When the cells reached 80–100% confluency, they were subcultured at a 1:20 ratio into a new 10-cm plate with 10 ml of antibiotic-containing medium. Untransfected controls were used to confirm selection efficacy. In total, cells were subjected to selection for approximately 10 days.

    For Tet-On-inducible cell lines, after selection, cells were plated into a six-well culture dish at a density of 300,000 cells per well with 1 µM doxycycline. After 2 days of treatment with 1 µM doxycycline, cells were monoclonally sorted by fluorescence-activated cell sorting into a 96-well culture plate, selecting for cells in the top 10% of iRFP expression. Sorted cells that formed colonies were subcultured 1:2 into two wells of a 24-well plate and one well was treated with 10 µM doxycycline. Then, 2 days later, cells from the treated well were lifted by pipetting with PBS and analyzed by flow cytometry. Monoclonal lines that showed uniform induction of iRFP expression were selected and cells from the untreated wells were cultured as normal.

    Assessment of EGFPY66H editing by flow cytometry

    On day 0, HEK293T cells stably expressing EGFPY66H were plated into a 24-well plate at a density of 70,000 cells per well. On day 1, cells were transfected with plasmids encoding an RNA editor and gRNA using jetPRIME in accordance with the manufacturer’s protocol. Then, 2 days later, cells were lifted by pipetting with PBS and analyzed by flow cytometry.

    For siRNA guides applied in HEK293T cells stably expressing EGFPY66H and an inducible editor, EGFPY66H experiments were carried out as above but 10 µM doxycycline was included in both the seeding and transfection medium. Next, 100 nM siRNA was transfected using jetPRIME in accordance with the manufacturer’s protocol.

    For ddGFP45 knockdown experiments, HEK293T cells stably expressing ddGFP were used in the same procedure.

    Assessment of target transcript editing rates and expression levels

    HEK293T cells were plated into six-well plates at a density of 250,000 cells per well. Then, 1 day later, cells were transfected with a plasmid encoding an RNA editor and guide using jetPRIME transfection reagent in a transfection mixture containing 3 µg of plasmid, 6 µl of jetPRIME reagent and 200 µl of jetPRIME buffer. Transfection was carried out according to the manufacturer’s protocol. For experiments measuring editing on EGFPY66H transcripts, cells were instead transfected with a 1:20 mixture of plasmids encoding the EGFPY66H driven by a PGK promoter and the editor/guide plasmid. Then, 2 days later, the medium was aspirated off the cells, which were then washed with PBS and lifted by trypsin at room temperature. When cells had lifted, the trypsin was quenched with complete DMEM and the cell suspension was transferred to a 1.5-ml tube. Cells were pelleted by centrifugation at 300g for 5 min and the supernatant medium was aspirated. Cells were resuspended in 1 ml of PBS and then pelleted; the supernatant was aspirated.

    Total RNA was extracted with either the RNeasy Kit (Qiagen) or Trizol (Thermo Fisher) according to the manufacturer’s protocol. RNA samples were eluted or resuspended with 40 µl of deionized (DI) water. RNA concentration was assessed by diluting samples 1:5 in pH 7.0 10 mM TrisCl buffer and taking the average of triplicate concentration measurements by NanoDrop. RNA integrity was assessed by 1:5 dilution in pH 7.5 10 mM TrisCl buffer and confirming A260/A280 of 2.0–2.1 and A260/A230 > 2.0 by NanoDrop. Furthermore, 1.5 µl of each sample was separated on a 1% agarose gel, run at 60 V for 40 min and assessed for clear 28S and 18S bands; when RNA extraction was performed with Trizol, the 5S rRNA band was also clearly visible.

    For reverse transcription to cDNA, a 5-µl aliquot of each sample was diluted to a concentration of 125 ng µl−1. The 20-µl reverse transcription reaction mixtures included 4 µl of 125 ng µl−1 total RNA (500 ng in total), 2 µl of 10× RT buffer, 1.4 µl of 25 mM MgCl2, 1 µl of 10 mM dNTP mix, 1 µl of 100 mM DTT, 1 µl of recombinant RNase inhibitor, 1 µl of 50 µM oligo(dT)16 primers (Integrated DNA Technologies), 1 µl of MultiScribe reverse transcriptase and 7.6 µl of DI water. The reverse transcription reaction was carried out with the following protocol: 25 °C for 10 min, 37 °C for 2 h and 95 °C for 5 min. When the reaction was complete, cDNA samples were adjusted to a total volume of 100 µl by adding 80 µl of DI water.

    All individual qPCR reactions were 20 µl in total volume consisting of 10 µl of SYBR green universal master mix (Thermo Fisher), 5 µl of cDNA template, 1.2 µl of 5 µM forward primer, 1.2 µl of 5 µM reverse primer and 2.6 µl of DI water. For each experiment, a master mix for each primer pair containing PCR master mix, primers and water was made then aliquoted to individual reactions. Reactions were mixed in 96-well PCR plates sealed with Microseal B adhesive seals (Bio-Rad) and then analyzed by qPCR with the following protocol: 50 °C for 2 min, 95 °C for 2 min and 39 cycles of 95 °C for 15 s, 60.1 °C (primer Tm) for 15 s and 72 °C for 60 s per kb of the longest product, followed by fluorescence measurement.

    All qPCR primers (Supplementary Table 8) were designed to amplify the edited region of the target transcript, with Primer-BLAST (National Center for Biotechnology Information) and appended with indexing adaptors. Primers were assessed for PCR efficiency using an eight-point dilution curve of pooled cDNA samples, run in technical duplicate or triplicate. Primer pairs were judged efficient if they resulted in apparent efficiencies of 90–110% over at least five points of the dilution curve. Primers were assessed for single product formation by melting curve (70–95 °C, +0.2 °C every 5 s) and agarose gel electrophoresis. All primers used for qPCR in this study were efficient at a Tm of 60.1 °C.

    Final qPCR measurements were carried out in technical triplicate for the target transcript and two reference transcripts, SNW1 and one of GAPDH or HNRNPL81. Final qPCR data were analyzed according to the method recommended by Taylor et al.82.

    For editing assessment by sequencing, a PCR amplification number, n, was identified such that all samples were at 50–75% maximum amplification at n cycles, according to qPCR data. Edited segments of target transcripts were amplified by PCR using AmpliTaq Gold 360 2× master mix. A 10-µl aliquot of the PCR reaction was assessed by agarose gel electrophoresis and the remainder was purified with Zymo DNA clean and concentrator kit (Zymo Research) according to the manufacturer’s protocol. An aliquot of the purified PCR product was diluted 1:100 and amplified by 12-cycle PCR with primers containing barcode sequences (Supplementary Table 9). PCR products were assessed and purified as above, then pooled in equal amounts in groups of three (usually three replicates of the same condition) and sequenced by Oxford Nanopore sequencing. Reads in the fastq sequencing data were sorted by barcode. Adaptors and low-quality bases were trimmed with cutadapt83 and editing was quantified with CRISPResso2 (ref. 84). Code and software argument details can be found in Supplementary Discussion 2.

    RNA-seq total RNA extraction

    HEK293T cells were plated into six-well plates at a density of 250,000 cells per well. Then, 1 day later, cells were transfected with a plasmid encoding an RNA editor and guide using jetPRIME transfection reagent in a transfection mixture containing 3 µg of plasmid, 6 µl of jetPRIME reagent and 200 µl of jetPRIME buffer. In dose response experiments, variable plasmid masses were used for transfection. For any transfection, <2 µg of the total plasmid mass was normalized to 2 µg with empty vector. Transfection was carried out according to the manufacturer’s protocol. Then, 2 days later, the medium was aspirated off the cells, which were then washed with PBS and lifted by treatment with trypsin at room temperature. When cells had lifted, the trypsin was quenched with complete DMEM and the cell suspension was transferred to a 1.5-ml tube. Cells were pelleted by centrifugation at 300g for 5 min and the supernatant medium was aspirated. Cells were resuspended in 1 ml of PBS and then pelleted; the supernatant was aspirated.

    Total RNA was extracted with Trizol (Thermo Fisher) according to the manufacturer’s protocol. RNA samples were resuspended in 40 µl of DI water. To remove residual DNA, the aqueous samples were treated with DNase from the Qiagen RNase-Free DNase set and repurified with the RNeasy kit (Qiagen) according to the manufacturer’s instructions, with a final elution in 40 µl of DI water. RNA concentration and integrity were assessed as above. Samples were stored at −80 °C and then transferred to Novogene on dry ice by courier at the earliest opportunity. All data were collected from three biological replicates.

    RNA-seq sample quality control and library preparation

    RNA-seq data were obtained from Novogene through their mRNA-seq service. The protocol was adapted from their methods documentation. Briefly, the concentration, purity and integrity of total RNA samples were assessed with an Agilent 5400 bioanalyzer. mRNA was purified from total RNA using poly(T) oligo-attached magnetic beads. After fragmentation, the first-strand cDNA was synthesized using random hexamer primers followed by second-strand cDNA synthesis. The library was ready after end repair, A tailing, adaptor ligation, size selection, amplification and purification. The library was checked with Qubit and real-time PCR for quantification and a bioanalyzer for size-distribution detection. After library quality control, different libraries were pooled on the basis of the effective concentration and targeted data amount and then subjected to 2× 150-bp paired-end sequencing on an Illumina NovaSeq X Plus, resulting in at least 21,223,588 paired-end reads for sequenced samples.

    RNA-seq data analysis general information

    Detailed argument information for all software tools and code for all Python and R scripts used in RNA-seq data analysis can be found in Supplementary Discussion 3 and on GitHub (https://github.com/rflusi/ALTER-code). All data analysis was performed on personal computers or Stanford’s Sherlock computing cluster.

    RNA-seq data quality control

    Fastq files with raw read data were obtained from Novogene for ALTER and from BioProject PRJNA635732 (ref. 8) for Cas editors and A3A overexpression. Trimming of sequencing adaptors and low-quality bases and filtering of low-quality reads were performed with fastp85. The resulting fastq files were assessed with FastQC and MultiQC86.

    RNA-seq genomic references

    All genomic reference data were derived from the GENCODE release 48 comprehensive gene annotation of the primary GRCh38.p14 assembly. For each sample the relevant editor plasmids were added to the genome fasta, with corresponding transcript sequences added to the transcript fasta and features added to the GENCODE gtf file. The genome fasta and gtf files were used to generate genome indexes for STAR87.

    Analysis of C-to-U off-targets in RNA-seq data

    Reads were aligned to the corresponding genomic reference using STAR (version 2.7.10b) 87 in two-pass mode. Variant calling was performed with GATK (version 4.6.0.0)88. Alignment bam files were prepared for variant calling. Duplicate reads were identified and annotated with GATK MarkDuplicates and reads spanning splice junctions were split with GATK SplitNCigarReads. Variants were called with GATK HaplotypeCaller in GVCF mode, parallelized over four genomic intervals per sample. GVCF files for each sample were merged with GATK MergeVcfs and the sample GVCF files were then combined with GATK CombineGVCFs. The combined GVCF underwent joint genotyping with GATK GenotypeGVCFs to produce a final variant vcf file. This vcf file was filtered for low QD (QD < 2.0), strand bias (FS > 30.0), low depth (DP < 10) and low quality (QUAL < 20.0) and then converted to a variant table with GATK VariantFiltration and GATK VariantsToTable. The data from Novogene and BioProject PRJNA635732 (ref. 8) were analyzed in separate groups.

    Final analysis was carried out with Python scripts developed for this project. The variant table was processed by (1) inferring variant strand and sequence identity; (2) converting to binary genotypes; (3) calculating the percentage of reads matching the reference nucleotide; and (4) calculating the percentage of reads matching the variant base for C-to-U variants. The final table was then filtered for high-confidence C-to-U off-targets based on the following criteria: (1) called as variants in the editor sample; (2) C-to-U variant; (3) read depth ≥ 20; (4) genotype quality ≥ 20 (99% confidence); and (5)>99% of transfection control reads match the reference base. Sequence contexts for the ten bases 5′ and 3′ of off-target hits were extracted from genomic reference data and used to generate nucleotide enrichment plots. The minimum free energy secondary structure of each sequence context was calculated and used to generate structural element frequency plots. The sequence context was widened to 100 bases 5′ and 3′ and then the seed-binding motifs of known miRNAs89 and gRNAs were aligned to each sequence context and alignment data were used to generate alignment count and frequency plots.

    Analysis of DEGs in RNA-seq data

    Using Salmon90, raw transcript counts were generated by mapping reads from sequencing fastq files to a Salmon index generated from the genomic reference transcripts fasta file. Count normalization and DEG analysis were performed using DESeq2 (ref. 91) in an R script written for this project. Genes were identified as DEGs if Padj < 0.01 and the magnitude of log2(fold change) > 1. A list of all genes with sufficient read depth to be included in the DESeq2 analysis, ranked by log2(fold change), underwent GSEA analysis66 using the fgsea92 library in R. DEG hits were analyzed for GO term enrichment with the clusterProfiler93 R library. DEGs were cross-referenced to known miRNA targets in miRTarBase64 using a Python script.

    Editor analysis by MARIA

    Peptides were predicted for MHC presentation using a local copy of the publicly available tool MARIA67. In brief, all possible 15-mer peptides containing a nonnative residue were enumerated and their likelihood for MHC class II presentation predicted. These peptides were assigned a MARIA raw score and a percentile score corresponding to their predicted raw score relative to 20,000 random human peptides. Using previously determined percentile thresholds, peptides were considered predicted to be presented if their scores exceeded the 63rd percentile of MARIA raw scores, representing an FOR of 1%. Unless otherwise stated, predictions were performed using the HLA-DRB1*01:01 allele without the optional TPM parameter.

    Predicted peptide immunogenic silencing

    Protein sequences were analyzed to identify regions containing nonnative residues, including engineered amino acid substitutions, heterologous sequence insertions and domain–junction boundaries. The full amino acid sequence was scanned using overlapping 15-mer tiles, cataloging all peptides containing at least one nonnative residue. Overlapping peptides were merged into contiguous intervals, defining discrete immunogenic regions for targeted mutation.

    For each region, single-amino-acid or double-amino-acid substitutions were introduced at eligible positions to reduce predicted immunogenicity. Each extended sequence window was then evaluated for presented peptides as described above. Variant regions exhibiting the lowest predicted presented peptides were chosen with the total number of tied variants limited by random subsampling. These winning variants were then further mutated as described above until variant regions with zero predicted presented peptides were identified. Resulting designs were advanced for subsequent experimental benchmarking. This analysis was carried out in an R script developed for this project.

    VLP production

    Information on plasmid sequences can be found in Supplementary Table 5.

    On day 0, a T75 culture flask was seeded with 3 × 106 HEK293T cells in complete DMEM. On day 1, the cell culture medium was exchanged for 10 ml of complete DMEM and the cells were transfected with the following plasmid mixture: (1) 6.7 µg of pRFL396, encoding the Gag–ALTER-4 fusion; (2) 3.3 µg of MMLV-Gag-Pro-Pol (Addgene, 35614); (3) 1 µg of VSV-G (Addgene, 8454); and (4) 10 µg of pRFL364 encoding the ALTER guide to be expressed transiently in the producing cells. The plasmids were mixed with 500 µl of jetPRIME buffer and 20 µl of jetPRIME reagent (Sartorius) and transfection was carried out according to the manufacturer’s protocol. Then, 6 h after transfection, the medium was exchanged for 10 ml of fresh complete DMEM further supplemented with 1× ViralBoost (Alstem). On day 2, the cell culture medium was collected in a 15-ml tube and replaced with 10 ml of fresh complete DMEM. The 15-ml tube was centrifuged at 500g, 4 °C for 5 min and then the supernatant was transferred to a second tube. Next, 2.5 ml of PEG-IT (System Biosciences LV810A-1) was added to the sample and it was stored at 4 °C. On day 3, the cell culture medium was collected in a 15-ml tube and centrifuged at 500g, 4 °C for 5 min; then, the supernatant was transferred to a second tube. Next, 2.5 ml of PEG-IT was added to the sample and it was stored at 4 °C. On day 4, the samples were centrifuged at 1,500g, 4 °C for 30 min. The supernatant was transferred to a new tube, carefully so as not to disturb the precipitate pellet. The supernatant was again centrifuged at 1,500g, 4 °C for 30 min and the supernatant was aspirated away from the residual pellet. All pellets (24-h primary, 24-h residual, 48-h primary and 48-h residual) were mixed by resuspending in 200 µl of PBS then stored at −80 °C in 50-µl aliquots.

    Assessment of VLP activity by EGFPY66H editing

    On day 0, a 24-well culture plate was seeded with 25,000 HEK293T cells stably expressing the EGFPY66H reporter. On day 1, the complete DMEM was replaced with 0.5 ml of fresh complete DMEM. One well was treated with a 50-µl aliquot of the VLP suspension while another was transfected with 500 ng of plasmid encoding ALTER-4 and guide with jetPRIME reagent (Sartorius) according to the manufacturer’s protocol. On day 5, the cells were analyzed by flow cytometry.

    AAV production

    On day 0, HEK293T cells were plated into nine six-well plates per viral sample at a density of 350,000 cells per well. On day 1, cells were transfected with transgene, AAV-DJ rep/cap (Addgene, 130878) and helper plasmid (GenBank AF369965.1) in a 1:1:2 ratio using jetPRIME transfection reagent in a transfection mixture containing 2 µg of plasmids, 4 µl of jetPRIME reagent and 200 µl of jetPRIME buffer. Transfection was carried out according to the manufacturer’s protocol. On day 4, medium was aspirated off the cells, which were then washed with 350 µl of PBS and lifted by treatment with 200 µl of trypsin at room temperature. When cells had lifted, the trypsin was quenched with 800 µl of complete DMEM. The cell suspension for all nine plates was pooled into a 15-ml conical tube and pelleted by centrifugation at 500g for 5 min. The supernatant medium was aspirated and the pellet was resuspended in 750 µl of complete DMEM. Cell suspensions were then transferred to cryovials and lysed by three freeze–thaw cycles going from dry ice in ethanol to a 37 °C water bath, 3 min in each per cycle. Lysates were centrifuged at 7,500g for 5 min. The supernatant was extracted and centrifuged as before. If sediment was detected after extracting the supernatant, the supernatant was spun a final time at 9,000g for 5 min. Supernatant was used for immediate transduction into HEK293T cells stably expressing EGFPY66H.

    AAV titer measurement

    First, 200 µl of virus-containing supernatant was treated with Benzonase nuclease (MilliporeSigma) at 50 U per ml to remove uncapsidated viral genomes. The mixture was incubated at 37 °C for 45 min, after which the enzyme was inactivated by addition of UltraPure 0.5 M EDTA (Thermo Fisher) to a final concentration of 15 mM. The Macherey-Nagel NucleoSpin virus mini kit (Fisher Scientific) was used to isolate viral DNA from the mixture according to the manufacturer’s protocol. Transgene plasmid was linearized and concentration was assessed by NanoDrop. Six qPCR standards were prepared by serial tenfold dilutions starting from a 5 ng µl−1 stock of the linearized plasmid. Viral DNA was diluted tenfold and measured against the standards by qPCR with primers against the transgene.

    Assessment of AAV activity by EGFPY66H editing

    On day 0, 1 day before AAV harvesting, HEK293T cells stably expressing EGFPY66H under an EF1α promoter were plated into 48-well plates at a density of 42,500 cells per well. On day 1, the medium was aspirated off the cells and replaced with a mixture of 190 µl of complete DMEM and 60 µl of AAV suspension. On day 5, the medium was aspirated off and the cells washed with PBS. Cells were then lifted by treatment with trypsin at room temperature. When cells had lifted, the trypsin was quenched with complete DMEM and cells were pelleted by centrifugation at 500g for 5 min before resuspending in PBS. After pelleting by centrifugation at 500g for 5 min, cells were resuspended in PBS and analyzed by flow cytometry.

    Reporting summary

    Further information on research design is available in the Nature Portfolio Reporting Summary linked to this article.

    Data availability

    All data supporting these findings are available in the article and its Supplementary Information. Plasmid sequences for key constructs were uploaded to Benchling and are publicly available (Supplementary Table 5). High-throughput sequencing data from RNA-seq experiments were deposited to the National Center for Biotechnology Information’s Sequence Read Archive under BioProject PRJNA1522030. Source data are provided with this paper.

    Code availability

    Code written for RNA-seq data processing, MARIA analysis and the deimmunization workflow is available from GitHub (https://github.com/rflusi/ALTER-code).

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    Acknowledgements

    This work was supported by National Institutes of Health fellowship F32 GM149057 to R.F.L., a Stanford Bio-X Fellowship to S.M.V.H. and a Burroughs Wellcome Fund CASI award to S.M.B.

    Funding

    R.F.L. discloses support for this work from the National Institutes of Health (grant no. F32 GM149057). S.M.V.H. discloses support for this work from Stanford Bio-X. C.M. declares no relevant funding. S.M.B. declares support for this work from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.

    Author information

    Author notes

    1. These authors contributed equally: Salvador Moncayo von Hase, Corey Model.

    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Department of Chemistry, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

      Robert F. Lusi, Salvador Moncayo von Hase, Corey Model & Steven M. Banik

    2. Sarafan ChEM-H, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

      Steven M. Banik

    Authors

    1. Robert F. Lusi
    2. Salvador Moncayo von Hase
    3. Corey Model
    4. Steven M. Banik

    Contributions

    R.F.L. and S.M.B. conceptualized the project. R.F.L., S.M.V.H. and C.M. conducted the experiments and analyzed all data. C.M. and S.M.V.H. contributed equally to this work. R.F.L., C.M. and S.M.B. wrote the paper. S.M.B. provided supervision.

    Corresponding author

    Correspondence to
    Steven M. Banik.

    Ethics declarations

    Competing interests

    R.F.L., S.M.V.H., C.M., S.M.B. and Stanford University have filed a provisional patent based on this work.

    Peer review

    Peer review information

    Nature Biotechnology thanks Anna Nemudraia and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

    Additional information

    Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

    Extended data

    Extended Data Fig. 1 Structural Modeling of AGO2 and Additional Guide Optimization.

    a, The AGO2 domain of ALTER modeled with AlphaFold3 (left) overlaid with known AGO2 crystal structures (right, PDB 6N4O)36. b, Guide sequences and expected base pairing to a ddGFP target (left). Fluorescence data from HEK293T cells expressing stably integrated ddGFP driven by an EF1α promoter transfected with plasmids encoding guides with or without ALTER-1 (normalized to untransfected cells, right). Guide sequences and expected base pairing for the guides used in: c, Fig. 1e, guides were designed to vary loop size while keeping the target a relatively consistent distance from the ends of the loop. d, Fig. 1f, guides move the target base within a 14-nucleotide loop. e, Fig. 1g, guides with the 14L8 loop falling at different locations with respect to the guide. f, Guide designs featuring additional mismatches to the EGFPY66H target. Guide sequences and expected base-pairing to target (top) and resulting fluorescence data (bottom). All fluorescence data were acquired after transfection of HEK293T-EGFPY66H cells. Data are presented as mean ± s.d. (b, f) of 3 biological replicates, with pairwise comparisons analyzed by unpaired Welch’s t-test. Data points indicate replicates; bar heights indicate means.

    Source data

    Extended Data Fig. 2 Expanded ALTER Modifications and Guide SAR.

    a, EGFPY66H editing activity of ALTER editors using AGO1 or AGO3 as the targeting module. b, ALTER editors with F470V, F505V and ∆PAZ modifications show little editing activity in the EGFPY66H assay. c, Effect of rat A1 in ALTER on an AC recoded EGFPY66H reporter using 14L8 and 19L11(11,10) guides. d, Effect of human A1 in ALTER editing of the AC EGFPY66H reporter. e–l, Guide design and resulting fluorescence in the EGFPY66H editing assay for new guide series. e–f, Guides with progressive mismatches from g19 to g12. g–h, Guides with progressive mismatches from g12 to g19. i–j, Guides with the 14L8 5’ region with loop sizes varied by changing the 3’ region. k–l, Guides with the 14L8 3’ region and loop sizes varied by changing the 5’ region. m, EGFPY66H editing activity of ALTERs 3 and 4 with guides that were more effective than 14L8 with ALTER-1. n, Data from m normalized to the signal from the 14L8 guide with the same editor. nt, non-targeting guide; tgt, targeting guide. Data are presented as mean ± s.d. (a–d, f, h, j, l–n) of 3 biological replicates, with pairwise comparisons analyzed by unpaired Welch’s t-test. Data points indicate replicates; bar heights indicate means.

    Source data

    Extended Data Fig. 3 Fluorescence from EGFPY66H Editing can Characterize a Panel of Editors and is Linearly Related to % C-to-U.

    a, Fluorescence signal from HEK293T cells stably expressing EGFPY66H, under an EF1α promoter, and transfected with different editors paired with non-targeting guide controls. ALTER guides are 14L8 unless indicated otherwise. b, EGFPY66H transcript levels relative to the mean level resulting from transfection with a NanoLuc transfection control. c, Fluorescence of single cell events and % C-to-U quantification in cells expressing EGFPY66H. d, Relationship between MFI and % C-to-U data in c, modeled by linear regression. e, Fluorescence of cells expressing the iRFP transfection marker and % C-to-U normalized to the percentage of transfected cells expressing EGFPY66H. f, Relationship between MFI and corrected % C-to-U data in e, modeled by linear regression. g, Fluorescence signal from cells expressing EGFPY66H transfected with ALTER-4N. h, Heatmap of % C-to-U at different Cs in the EGFPY66H sequencing amplicon (target at position 0). i, Heatmap of transfection-corrected % C-to-U. All fluorescence values measured by live-cell flow cytometry. nt, non-targeting guide; tgt, targeting guide. In a–c, e, and g, data are presented as mean ± s.d. of 3 biological replicates, with pairwise comparisons analyzed by unpaired Welch’s t-test. Data points indicate replicates; bar heights indicate means. In d, f, data are presented as the mean of 3 biological replicates for both fluorescence (y-axis) and % C-to-U measured by sequencing (x-axis). In h–i, data are presented as the mean of 3 biological replicates with darker shades indicating higher means as indicated by the legends.

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    Extended Data Fig. 4 ALTER-4 Effectively Edits Endogenous Targets with Some Bystander Edits.

    a, Heatmap of % C-to-U in PPIB sequencing amplicon. b, Heatmap of % C-to-U normalized to activity at the target (position 0) for PPIB. c–d, SMARCA4. e–f, ACTB. g–h, TYMS. i–j, MALAT1. Data are presented as the mean of 3 biological replicates with darker shades indicating higher means as indicated by the legends.

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    Extended Data Fig. 5 Efficacy of Guide Designs Depends on Target, Guide Design can Mitigate Bystander Edits, and Editing Activity is Dependent on Dose of ALTER.

    a, 14L8, 14L8(12-13 mm), and 12L6 guide designs for PPIB and TYMS. b, Editing activity on PPIB and TYMS after transfection with different guide designs and ALTER-4. c, PPIB and TYMS transcript levels relative to ALTER-4 with a non-targeting guide. d, C-to-U editing at TYMS target C876 and bystander C871. e, Ratio of TYMS C876:C871 editing with different guides. Relationship between mass of ALTER-4, TYMS-14L8 guide transfected into a 6-well culture dish and f, MFI of the iRFP transfection marker in all single cell and transfected single cell (iRFP + ) flow cytometry events, g–h, C-to-U editing for all transfections under 2 µg, transfected plasmid mass was normalized with empty vector. i, % C-to-U editing after transfection with 3 µg of CURE-N and RESCUE-S compared to 0.5 µg ALTER-4. j–k, Dose-response of relative transcript levels. l, Using an amplicon which contains the guide binding site does not affect qPCR results94. In b–e, g, i–j, and l, data are presented as mean ± s.d. of 3 biological replicates, with pairwise comparisons analyzed by unpaired Welch’s t-test. Data points indicate replicates; bar heights indicate means. In f, h, and k, data are presented as the mean ± s.d. of 3 biological replicates with curves fit by nonlinear regression.

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    Extended Data Fig. 6 Off-Target Edit Counts Differ Between ALTER Editors and Guides; Off-Target Edits Match A3A Editing Hotspots in Sequence and Structure.

    a, All off-target edits and total counts for each editor. RNA-seq data for A3A overexpression, CURE editors, and RESCUE-S obtained from BioProject PRJNA6357328. b, C-to-U off-target edits and total counts. c, A-to-I off-target edits and total counts. d, Sequence consensus around C-to-U off-target edits for ALTER-4-TYMS. e, Structure consensus for ALTER-4-TYMS C-to-U off-target edits. f, UpSet plot showing overlap in different sets of all off-target edits. g, Classification of all ALTER-4 off-target edits by whether they are shared with A3A overexpression or CURE. h, Classification of all ALTER off-target edits by whether they are shared with A3A overexpression or CURE. Sequence and structure consensus around C-to-U off-target edits for i–j, A3A overexpression, k–l, CURE-N, m–n, RESCUE-S.

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    Extended Data Fig. 7 miRNA and Guide Alignments to Off-Target Edits.

    a–f, Count of seed alignments of known miRNAs89 in a 201-nucleotide RNA context window for each editor’s off-target edits compared to a matched sample size of UC positions randomly selected from expressed transcripts. g–l, Seed alignments of known miRNAs in context windows for unique off-targets. m–r, Seed alignments of respective guide RNAs in context windows for off-target edits. s–x, Seed alignments of respective guide RNAs in context windows for unique off-target edits. Data are presented as mean ± s.d. of alignments per context window, with pairwise comparisons analyzed by unpaired Welch’s t-test. Data points indicate alignment counts for individual context windows; lines indicate means.

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    Extended Data Fig. 8 Positional Guide Alignment Frequency Shows Distinct Pattern for Fraction of ALTER Off-Target Edits.

    Frequency of guide seed alignment at each position in the off-target edit context windows for a, CURE-C2, b, CURE-N, c, ALTER-4-PPIB, d, ALTER-4-TYMS, e, ALTER-2-TYMS, f, ALTER-3-TYMS. g–l, Fraction of off-target edits with guide seed matches.

    Source data

    Extended Data Fig. 9 DEG Analysis.

    a, Frequency of known miRNA targets in off-target edits for each editor. b, DEG counts. c, Frequency of known miRNA targets in DEGs. d, Frequency of off-targets in DEGs.

    Source data

    Extended Data Fig. 10 MARIA Analysis of Different RNA Editors and Fluorescence Intensity After ALTER Delivery Via Enveloped Particle.

    a, MARIA presentation percentiles for all non-human 15-mer peptides resulting from each RNA editor discussed (left). Counts of over-threshold peptides, indicating likely presentation by MHC class II, for each editor discussed (right). b, ALTER-1 lacking a linker between AGO2 and A3A modeled with AlphaFold341, in which the first 35 residues of AGO2 are highlighted in yellow. c, Fraction of over-threshold peptides resulting from each non-human modification in each ALTER variant along with their deimmunized analogs. d, Fluorescence of HEK293T cells expressing EGFPY66H driven by an EF1α promoter and treated with ALTER-4-14L8-loaded VLPs, measured by live-cell flow cytometry. e, Fluorescence of HEK293T cells expressing EGFPY66H and treated with AAVs encoding ALTER-4 and the 14L8 guide. Data are presented as mean ± s.d. (d–e) of 3 independent biological replicates, with pairwise comparisons analyzed by unpaired Welch’s t-test. Data points indicate replicates; bar heights indicate means.

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    Supplementary information

    Supplementary Information (download PDF )

    Supplementary Figs. 1–24, Tables 1–4 and Discussions 1–3.

    Reporting Summary (download PDF )

    Supplementary Tables (download XLSX )

    Representative plasmid sequences. Descriptions and sequences of key plasmid constructs used throughout the study as well as information on figure(s) for which they are relavant. For ALTER plasmids, sequence information for how different guides were incorporated can be found in Supplementary Table 5. All sequences are recorded 5′ → 3′. Supplementary Table 6: ALTER guide sequences. Sequences of ALTER guides used in this study, including sequences for encoding guides as shRNA expressed from a U6 promoter. All sequences are recorded as their DNA encoding and 5′ → 3′. Supplementary Table 7: CURE-N and RESCUE-S guide sequences. Sequences of CURE-N and RESCUE-S guides used in this study. All sequences are recorded as their DNA encoding and 5′ → 3′. Supplementary Table 8: qPCR primer sequences. Sequences of primers used for qPCR. All primers for editing targets contained one of two adaptor sequences: (F) TCGTCGGCAGCGTC or (R) GTCTCGTGGGCTCGG, used to add barcode sequences with a second PCR reaction. All qPCR reactions used a Tm of 60.1 °C and all barcoding PCRs used a Tm of 57.6 °C and were run for 12 cycles on a 1:100 dilution of the initial PCR product. All sequences are recorded 5′ → 3′. Supplementary Table 9: barcoding primer sequences. Sequences of primers used for adding barcodes for pooled sequencing of editing quantification samples. All barcoding PCRs used a Tm of 57.6 °C and were run for 12 cycles on a 1:100 dilution of the initial PCR product. All sequences are recorded 5′ → 3′.

    Source data

    About this article

    Cite this article

    Lusi, R.F., Moncayo von Hase, S., Model, C. et al. Engineered human Argonaute 2 for targeted C-to-U RNA base editing.
    Nat Biotechnol (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-026-03359-y

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    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-026-03359-y

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    Macy is an author on the AI Team. She covers how AI is altering life and how to take advantage of it. This consists of discussing customer AI items and their real-world effect, from development tools improving life to the intimate methods individuals engage with AI innovation everyday. Macy is a North Carolina local who finished from UNC-Chapel Hill with a Bachelor’s Degree in English and a 2nd bachelor’s degree in Journalism. You can reach her at [email protected].
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