CRISPR & Genetic Engineering News and Discussions

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Time_Traveller
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Re: CRISPR & Genetic Engineering News and Discussions

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Major genetics breakthrough could herald new era of tests and treatments reflecting ethnic diversity
Wednesday 10 May 2023 16:08, UK

Scientists have unveiled the first draft of a genetic blueprint that more accurately reflects diversity in the human population.

They say the major advance could open up a new era of genetic-based tests and treatments to everybody, regardless of their ethnic origin.

The current "official" DNA code of the human species, which was published as the Human Genome Project in 2001, has since been used as the reference against which all other genetic sequences have been compared.

But the genome was largely based on an anonymous American man of white European descent, creating a bias that's likely to exclude people with other ancestries from genetic advances.

Now, in a major scientific undertaking, a consortium of scientists has produced a more representative genetic manual, called a "pan-genome", that was based on samples taken from 47 diverse individuals.
https://news.sky.com/story/major-geneti ... y-12877704
"We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories...And those that carry us forward, are dreams."

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weatheriscool
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Re: CRISPR & Genetic Engineering News and Discussions

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Researchers discover a way to improve nonviral gene editing as well as a new type of DNA repair
https://phys.org/news/2023-05-nonviral-gene-dna.html
by University of California - Santa Barbara

Gene editing is a powerful method for both research and therapy. Since the advent of the Nobel Prize-winning CRISPR/Cas9 technology, a quick and accurate tool for genome editing discovered in 2012, scientists have been working to explore its capabilities and boost its performance.

Researchers in UC Santa Barbara biologist Chris Richardson's lab have added to that growing toolbox, with a method that increases the efficiency of CRISPR/Cas9 editing without the use of viral material to deliver the genetic template used to edit the target genetic sequence. According to their new paper published in the journal Nature Biotechnology, their method stimulates homology-directed repair (a step in the gene editing process) by approximately threefold "without increasing mutation frequencies or altering end-joining repair outcomes."

"We've found a chemical modification that improves non-viral gene editing and also discovered an intriguing new type of DNA repair," Richardson said.
Find, cut and paste

The CRISPR/Cas9 method works by capitalizing on a defense technique employed by bacteria against viral attackers. To do this, the bacteria snip a piece of the invading virus's genetic material, and incorporate it into their own in order to recognize it later. Should the bacteria get reinfected, they can target the now-familiar genetic sequences for destruction.

In gene editing, this process uses the enzyme Cas9 as molecular "scissors" to snip sequences it recognizes, guided by the CRISPR system. This cut is also an opportunity to replace the severed genes with similar (homologous) but improved ones, utilizing the cell's natural repair mechanisms. If successful, the cell should have modified expressions and functions thereafter.
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Next-level CRISPR gene editing: No viruses required
By Paul McClure
May 11, 2023
https://newatlas.com/biology/nonviral-m ... threefold/
Modified viruses have proven a handy way to get CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing materials into the nucleus of cells – but they're expensive, difficult to scale and potentially toxic. Now, researchers have found a non-viral approach that does the job better.

Most have heard of CRISPR/Cas9, the gene-editing technology that’s revolutionized biomedical research. Now, researchers have added another tool to the gene-editing toolbox after discovering a new way of using the technology that improves its editing efficiency and provides a new way to repair DNA.

CRISPR/Cas9 tech was adapted from a naturally occurring genome editing system bacteria use as an immune defense. When bacteria are infected by a virus, they ‘cut off’ a small piece of the virus’s DNA and insert it into their own in a particular arrangement known as a CRISPR array. This means the virus can be recognized later and, if it re-invades the bacteria, can be targeted for destruction.

Gene editing in humans relies on the Cas9 enzyme which, guided by CRISPR, ‘snips out’ a fragment of DNA. The removed section can be replaced with a similar (homologous) but improved DNA template by a process called homology-directed repair, which initiates the cell’s natural DNA repair mechanisms. Viruses – modified so they can’t cause disease – are commonly used to deliver the template DNA to the cell’s nucleus because of their effectiveness at entering cells.
weatheriscool
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Evolution experiment yields yeast 20,000x bigger and 10,000x tougher
By Michael Irving
May 15, 2023
Scientists are conducting a long-term experiment on evolution in the lab, to investigate how single-celled organisms could evolve into multicellular lifeforms. After thousands of generations, their yeast grew 20,000 times bigger and 10,000 times tougher.

The idea of an evolutionary “missing link” usually conjures images of a hairy ape-like hominid, but there are actually much more profound missing links in the chain. One of the biggest gaps sits between single-celled and multicellular organisms, which marks a key step in the development of complex life on Earth.

Now, scientists from Georgia Tech have reported the first results of an experiment that they hope to continue running for decades, with a pretty lofty goal – evolving single-celled lifeforms into brand new multicellular lifeforms. Directed evolution experiments have been conducted for decades, even winning the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2018, but those are usually focused on making new drugs or solving other problems, not plugging holes in our distant family tree.
https://newatlas.com/biology/evolution- ... icellular/
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Gene therapy rescues hearing for the first time in aged mouse models
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-05- ... mouse.html
by Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary
By 2050, one in 10 individuals are expected to live with some form of hearing loss. Of the hundreds of millions of cases of hearing loss affecting individuals worldwide, genetic hearing loss is often the most difficult to treat.

While hearing aids and cochlear implants offer limited relief, no available treatment can reverse or prevent this group of genetic conditions, prompting scientists to evaluate gene therapies for alternative solutions.
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Re: CRISPR & Genetic Engineering News and Discussions

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Hope for age-related hearing loss with novel gene therapy
By Bronwyn Thompson
May 29, 2023
https://newatlas.com/medical/age-relate ... e-therapy/

Age-related hearing loss impacts one in three adults between the ages of 64 and 75 in the US, and around half of these numbers are down to genes.

The extra kicker, though, is that because hearing involves a complex genetic toolkit, it also makes this kind of hearing loss incredibly difficult to treat.

A team of researchers has for the first time targeted age-related genetic hearing loss in a much older cohort of mice, which had a mutation of the human transmembrane serine protease 3 (TMPRSS3) gene that results in autosomal recessive deafness 8/10 (DFNB8/DFNB10).
weatheriscool
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Re: CRISPR & Genetic Engineering News and Discussions

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Using a gene-editing tool to improve productivity in rice crops
https://phys.org/news/2023-06-gene-edit ... crops.html
by University of Missouri
As global food insecurity climbed to a perilous high in 2022, scientists ramped up their efforts to perfect best practices for protecting the yields of major crops that are essential in combating this issue. And, while rice makes up a small portion of Missouri's annual harvest, it—along with corn and soybeans—are key staples that help address food insecurity not only in the United States, but across the world.

In a recent study that examined how diseases function in rice crops, University of Missouri researchers might have found critical answers.

In this study, Bing Yang, a plant biology professor in the MU College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center used genome editing as a tool to identify problematic pathogens present in certain bacteria that lead to prolific infections in rice crops. His research helps scientists understand how these pathogens function and, thus, can determine how to guard against widespread infections that destroy yields.

This research provides insight into the host-pathogen relationship, allowing scientists to better genetically engineer plants to survive crop diseases.
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Team develops CRISPR tool with big data visualization platform for genome editing and modification
https://phys.org/news/2023-06-team-cris ... ation.html
by Zhang Nannan, Chinese Academy of Sciences
A research team from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has developed an analysis service platform called CRISPRimmunity, which was an interactive web server for identifying important molecular events related to CRISPR and regulators of genome editing systems. The study is published in Nucleic Acids Research.

The new CRISPRimmunity platform was designed for integrated analysis and prediction of CRISPR-Cas and anti-CRISPR systems. It includes customized databases with annotations for known anti-CRISPR proteins, anti-CRISPR-associated proteins, class II CRISPR-Cas systems, CRISPR array types, HTH structural domains and mobile genetic elements. These resources allow the study of molecular events in the co-evolution of CRISPR-Cas and anti-CRISPR systems.
weatheriscool
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New way to identify RNA variants could make CRISPR gene editing more effective
https://phys.org/news/2023-06-rna-varia ... ctive.html
by Duke University Medical Center
CRISPR gene editing is a breakthrough that has been used to treat diseases such as sickle cell anemia, leukemia and genetic disorders, but it has challenges that limit its broad utility.

Identifying the root of those issues led a research team at Duke Health to find an improved approach to gene editing that expands its functionality.

In work published online June 29 in the journal Cell Chemical Biology, the researchers lay out a new way to identify diverse CRISPR RNA variants that can specifically home in on challenging areas of DNA to target for editing. The new approach opens up more of the genome for editing, enabling the repair of mutations associated with more diseases.

"CRISPR is great, but there are a lot of places within the human genome that can't be edited well," said senior author Bruce Sullenger, Ph.D., the Joseph W. and Dorothy W. Beard Distinguished Professor of Experimental Surgery at Duke University School of Medicine. Sullenger is also a professor in the departments of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology, Neurosurgery, Cell Biology and Biomedical Engineering.
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Re: CRISPR & Genetic Engineering News and Discussions

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Potential CRISPR alternative gene-editing tool occurs naturally in animals
By Michael Irving
July 03, 2023
https://newatlas.com/biology/fanzor-cri ... ternative/
CRISPR-Cas9 has been the household name of genetic engineering tools over the past decade, but there might be other, better ways. MIT scientists have now demonstrated an alternative called Fanzor, which is naturally found in animals so could be a better fit for human use.

The CRISPR gene-editing system was originally isolated from bacteria, which use an enzyme called Cas9 to snip out a section of a virus’s DNA and store it for later, to help them fight off that infection in the future. In 2012, scientists made the Nobel Prize-winning discovery that this process could be hijacked to edit DNA in living cells, which has since been used to treat diseases, grow better crops, and tweak bacteria to do some important things.

As successful as CRISPR has been so far, scientists have wondered if there are other similar systems at play in some of our closer relatives – after all, bacteria are about as far from us on the tree of life as it’s possible to get. And now, researchers at MIT have found a group of proteins that function much the same way, but in animals.
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