Researchers identify potential alternative to CRISPR-Cas genome editing tools

Thursday, October 22, 2015

New Cas enzymes shed light on evolution of CRISPR-Cas systems

An international team of CRISPR-Cas researchers has identified three new naturally-occurring systems that show potential for genome editing. The discovery and characterization of these systems is expected to further expand the genome editing toolbox, opening new avenues for biomedical research. The research, published today in the journal Molecular Cell, was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health.

“This work shows a path to discovery of novel CRISPR-Cas systems with diverse properties, which are demonstrated here in direct experiments,” said Eugene Koonin, Ph.D., senior investigator at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), National Library of Medicine (NLM), part of the NIH. “The most remarkable aspect of the story is how evolution has achieved a broad repertoire of biological activities, a feat we can take advantage of for new genome manipulation tools.”