Identification of potential TALEN and CRISPR/Cas9 targets of selected genes of some human pathogens which cause persistent infections

The human pathogens, Epstein Barr virus, human papilloma virus, herpes simplex virus-2, hepatitis B virus and Leishmania species can cause persistent infections, which cannot be cured with currently available treatments. The modern gene editing techniques, transcription activator like effector nuclease (TALEN) and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat / CRISPR associated protein 9 (CRISPR/Cas9), are potential candidates for their treatment. In this study, target sites for TALEN and CRISPR/Cas9 were identified in silico on selected essential and indispensable genes of the above pathogens, targeting the cease of the essential functions and curing the infection. The gene sequences of the pathogens were obtained from public databases and conserved sequences were identified. Then potential TALEN target sites were identified. For some selected targets, the off-target effects on the genomes of human, mouse, same pathogen and other organisms were tested and the putative functions of the mutated proteins were predicted. TALEN targets without having a potential off-target effect and not leading to mutated proteins with undesirable functions were selected for each gene. The potential CRISPR/Cas9 targets without off-target effect on human and murine genomes were identified and other offtarget effects were evaluated. Results showed that potential TALEN and/or CRISPR/Cas9 targets with higher binding specificity and efficiency were available for the selected genes. It can be concluded that the selected targets can potentially be used to produce respective proteins, and in vitro and in vivo applications are potentially possible.