CRISPR–Cas9-targeted fragmentation and selective sequencing enable massively parallel microsatellite analysis

Microsatellites are multi-allelic and composed of short tandem repeats (STRs) with individual motifs composed of mononucleotides, dinucleotides or higher including hexamers. Next-generation sequencing approaches and other STR assays rely on a limited number of PCR amplicons, typically in the tens. Here, we demonstrate STR-Seq, a next-generation sequencing technology that analyses over 2,000 STRs in parallel, and provides the accurate genotyping of microsatellites. STR-Seq employs in vitro CRISPR–Cas9-targeted fragmentation to produce specific DNA molecules covering the complete microsatellite sequence. Amplification-free library preparation provides single molecule sequences without unique molecular barcodes. STR-selective primers enable massively parallel, targeted sequencing of large STR sets. Overall, STR-Seq has higher throughput, improved accuracy and provides a greater number of informative haplotypes compared with other microsatellite analysis approaches. With these new features, STR-Seq can identify a 0.1% minor genome fraction in a DNA mixture composed of different, unrelated samples.