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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PCR, POC testing, CRISPR diagnostics, immunoassays. Many tests much confusion. Thankfully, Nature Biotechnology and the Financial Times bring some clarity on fast, portable tests to curb coronavirus pandemic.
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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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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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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.
Continue readingFrom Meganucleases to Prime Editing, download the high resolution cards!
