New editing enzyme: another tool for the "CRISPR toolbox"

New editing enzyme: another tool for the "CRISPR toolbox"

February 11, 2019 Source: Science and Technology Daily Author: Zhang Meng Ran

The British journal Nature recently published a new study in genetics: Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, reported a new enzyme, CasX, that regulates the human genome. Its editing capabilities are different from those of the previously described CRISPR-Cas system. This adds another member to the human "CRISPR Toolbox."

Known as the "genetic devil", CRISPR was discovered in the early 1990s and was first used in biochemical experiments after 7 years. It has since become the most popular in the fields of human biology, agriculture and microbiology. Gene editing tools. Compared to other genetic engineering tools, CRISPR has the advantage of being more accurate, cheaper, and relatively easy to use and powerful.

The CRISPR-Cas system performs genome editing with the help of members of the Cas nuclease family, which cleave DNA. Cas9 and Cas12a laid the foundation for this technology, but researchers are also looking for other Cas enzymes.

This time, Jennifer Downer, a scientist at the University of California at Berkeley, and colleagues isolated a nuclease from groundwater microbes and named it CasX. One of the most important applications of CasX is that it is much smaller than Cas9 or Cas12a - less than 1000 amino acids. Analysis shows that CasX can simultaneously modify the genome of humans and E. coli.

The researchers pointed out that the mechanism by which CasX edits DNA differs from the mechanism of Cas9 or Cas12a in function. The structure of CasX has features not found in other Cas proteins, such as a domain involved in DNA helix; its trans-cleavage activity also appears to be less than other Cas systems.

Scientists concluded that the newly discovered CasX is not only small, but also has a unique programmable editing method, which may have the advantages that the current CRISPR-Cas genome editing technology does not have.

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