While CRISPR-Cas9 is a powerful tool that has become the method of choice for genome editing, it is known to introduce unwanted ‘on-target’ and ‘off-target’ mutations, limiting its utility. Cas9-gene editing relies on the introduction of DNA double strand breaks that cause unwanted and potentially deleterious mutations and deletions at both on-target and off-target sites in the genome. Other versions of CRISPR-Cas9 (such as single base editors) were developed to address this, but are not suitable for applications aimed at introducing exogenous genes, and generally suffer from the same lack of specificity as normal CRISPR-Cas9.
Researchers at The University of Queensland (UQ) have developed a novel genome editing platform that virtually eliminates mutagenesis, yet has comparable efficiency to conventional CRISPR-Cas9. It can be delivered using a plasmid in the same manner as CRISPR-Cas9, requiring no changes to current gene editing practices.
Key features
- Enables genomic integration of heterologous gene sequences or single base editing
- Comparable editing efficiencies to the conventional CRISPR-Cas9 system with vastly reduced error rates in targeted locus
- Virtually undetectable on-target indels (Insertions deletions) at site of gene insertion
- Provides greater flexibility in where gRNA needs to target – enabling optimised gRNA design and targeting of difficult genomic loci.