Author Archives: Anna Meldolesi

About Anna Meldolesi

science writer

The CRISPR community and Covid-19

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Researchers from all the life sciences are turning their attention to the pandemic, and the CRISPR community is no exception. The latest CRISPR Journal‘s editorial presents a few of the projects that are showing promise, and others are probably going on. Kevin Davies and Rodolphe Barrangou also comment on the cancellation or postponement of several key conferences in the next few months due to Covid-19, especially the CRISPR 2020 meeting in Paris. They applaud all the scientists who are battling this disease in myriad ways and promise: we’ll meet again.

CRISPR application to infectious diseases

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CRISPR holds promise for the treatment of cancer and inherited disorders, as you know, but what about infectious diseases? It can do many useful things indeed, according to this review by Jeffrey Strich and Daniel Chertow, published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology.

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CRISPR targeting COVID-19

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Alexandra East-Seletsky graphic

Hopefully, CRISPR-based diagnostics will make an early debut amid COVID-19 outbreak. But what about a CRISPR prophylactic strategy to combat coronaviruses? The proof of concept is here, in bioRxiv, but it will be deployed in the next pandemic if we are lucky. It’s called PAC-MAN, like the videogame, stands for Prophylactic Antiviral CRISPR in huMAN cells, and comes from the Stanley Qi Lab.

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Prime-edited rice & CRISPR golden rice

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Do you remember prime editing? It’s the new ‘search-and-replace’ genome editing technology that mediates targeted insertions, deletions, all 12 possible base-to-base conversions, and combinations thereof. The first good news is that David Liu et al. adapted prime editors for use in rice and wheat, so don’t miss their paper in Nature Biotechnology.

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Waiting for the next Asimov

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The DNA double helix as a metaphor for the relationship between genetics and SciFi – novels and movies on the one strand and scientific breakthroughs on the other strand. It’s courtesy of graduated student Kartik Lakshmi Rallapalli, who examines the science and fiction timelines in a post for the Addgene blog.

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Toward a CRISPR-based diagnostics for COVID-19

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Do you remember Sherlock? The CRISPR-based platform was heralded in Science as a new generation of low cost diagnostic tests with single-base specificity, easy to use even when oubreaks occur in remote areas. The good news is that Feng Zhang and colleagues are sharing a research protocol, applicable to purified RNA, that may inform the development of a Sherlock test for COVID-19. For more information, visit the McGovern Institute website.

A vertical farm for CRISPR food

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Do you want it locally grown, water-saving and pesticide-free? Urban agriculture might suit you, with a little help from gene editing. Zachary Lippman’s team has already succeeded with Solanaceae fruit crops, optimizing tomatoes and ground-cherries for indoor production (see their paper in Nature Biotechnology).

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