Gene editing technology CRISPR has an upgraded version

Science and Technology Daily, Beijing, April 11 (intern reporter Zhang Jiaxin) A paper published online on the 9th in Cell magazine stated that Jonathan Weissman and others at the Whitehead Institute in the United States designed a new gene called CRISPRoff Editing technology can "silence" certain genes without changing the DNA sequence, thereby controlling gene expression with high specificity.

In the past ten years, CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology has brought revolutionary changes to genetic engineering.

"Using this new CRISPRoff technology, you can write a simple program to express proteins, which will be remembered by cells and executed indefinitely," said Luke Gilbert, an assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who participated in the research.

Gene epigenetics means that genes may be silenced or activated due to chemical changes in the DNA strand, and methylation is a major form of epigenetic modification of DNA.

Researchers have constructed an epigenetic editor that can mimic natural DNA methylation, which can attach methyl groups to specific sites in DNA under the guidance of RNA, and the marked genes will be silenced (closed).

Weissman said that this simple gene editing tool can effectively silence most genes without damaging any homogenous genes.