Large-Scale Analysis of CRISPR/Cas9 Cell-Cycle Knockouts Reveals the Diversity of p53-Dependent Responses to Cell-Cycle Defects

Defining the genes that are essential for cellular proliferation is critical for understanding organismal development and identifying high-value targets for disease therapies. However, the requirements for cell-cycle progression in human cells remain incompletely understood. To elucidate the consequences of acute and chronic elimination of cell-cycle proteins, we generated and characterized inducible CRISPR/Cas9 knockout human cell lines targeting 209 genes involved in diverse cell-cycle processes. We performed single-cell microscopic analyses to systematically establish the effects of the knockouts on subcellular architecture. To define variations in cell-cycle requirements between cultured cell lines, we generated knockouts across cell lines of diverse origins. We demonstrate that p53 modulates the phenotype of specific cell-cycle defects through distinct mechanisms, depending on the defect. This work provides a resource to broadly facilitate robust and long-term depletion of cell-cycle proteins and reveals insights into the requirements for cell-cycle progression. Keywords: kinetochore; centromere; mitosis; DNA replication; spindle; microtubule; multipolarity; p53; CRISPR/Cas