Disclosed herein are systems, compositions and methods for using a split dCas protein system to modify the epigenetic profile of a gene of interest. The systems, compositions, and methods are useful for modifying the epigenetic profile of a particular gene within a cell, based on the discovery that effective expression of a larger-sized recombinant protein can be successfully achieved using two separate expression cassettes each encoding a half of the protein fused with a half of an intein, utilizing the unique feature of an intein system to ultimately rejoin the two halves to form one larger fusion protein with the intein spliced out.