Fig. 4

CRISPR-dCas9 demethylation screen identifies functional epigenetic drivers in DLD1 cells. A Schema depicting the experimental CRISPR-dCas9 mediated pipeline adopted in the screen strategy. A total of 56 gene promoters were targeted with 2 gRNAs each against genomic regions with significant DNA hypermethylation levels in tumour cells. The screen was performed in parallel using DLD1 cells transduced with the chimeric constructs dCas9-TET1, dCas9-TET1-IM or the transcriptional activator dCas9-VP64. B Boxplots displaying the Scaled Robust Z-score data observed for the indicated gene promoters in the context of DLD1 cells transduced with dCas9-TET1 (top), dCas9-TET1-IM (middle) or dCas9-VP64 (bottom) constructs. Those epigenetic modulations that resulted in statistically significant changes in the proliferation rate of DLD1 cells are highlighted in orange, while conditions corresponding to control gRNAs are highlighted in red. C Venn diagrams illustrating the overlap of significant hits obtained in the different screen strategies. D Scatter plots showing the correlation between DNA methylation and gene expression levels for the gene RSPO2