CRISPR-Cas9 tagged posts

Technology offers powerful new genetic tools for human disease research in rodents. Using active genetics technology, biologists have developed the world’s first CRISPR/Cas9-based approach to control genetic inheritance in a mammal. The achievement in mice lays the groundwork for further advances based on this technology, including biomedical research on human disease. Future animal models may be possible of complex human genetic diseases, like arthritis and cancer, which are not currently possible.

Scientists around the world have been using CRISPR/Cas9 in a variety of plant and animal species to edit genetic information...

An artistic rendering of the mechanism responsible for relocalization of heterochromatic repair sites during homologous recombination. A nuclear myosin walks along a dynamic nuclear actin filament, carrying broken DNA for repair. Credit: Yekaterina Kadyshevskaya, USC

‘Walking molecules’ haul away damaged DNA to the cell’s emergency room. Amid the rise of CRISPR and genome editing, scientists are still learning more about DNA repair and its significance in aging and diseases such as cancer. The cell has its own paramedic team and emergency room to aid and repair damaged DNA, a new USC Dornsife study reveals.

The findings are timely, as scientists are delving into the potential of genome editing with the DNA-cutting enzyme, CRISPR-Cas9, to treat diseases or to advance scientific knowledge ab...

This is an artist’s impression of connected CRISPR-dCas9 NOR gates. Credit: University of Washington

Synthetic biology researchers have demonstrated a new method for digital information processing in living cells, analogous to the logic gates used in electric circuits. The circuits are the largest ever published to date in eurkaryotic cells and a key step in harnessing the potential of cells as living computers that can respond to disease, efficiently produce biofuels or develop plant-based chemicals.

Through billions of years of trial and error, evolution has arrived at a mode of information processing at the cellular level. In the microchips that run our computers, information processing capabilities reduce data to unambiguous 0s and 1s. In cells, it’s not that simple...

Highlights • Inducible CRISPRi iPSCs provide a valuable resource for rapid gene knockdown • CRISPRi knockdown is efficient, tunable, and reversible in iPSCs • CRISPRi knockdown is highly specific • CRISPRi enables disease modeling in iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes

CRISPR interference system inhibits rather than cuts the genome to suppress genes in stem cells, improving efficiency and precision of CRISPR-Cas9. Combining the 2 most powerful biological tools of the 21st century, scientists at the Gladstone Institutes have modified how the genome of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) is read for the first time using a variation of the CRISPR-Cas9 system. The development offers a major technological advance in creating cell models of genetic diseases.

The researchers used a modified ve...