CRISPR stocks slip after team describes off-target mutations

In a letter to the editor published in Nature Methods on Tuesday, researchers said the CRISPR gene editing technique led to unexpected off-target mutations in mice.

Researchers at Stanford University and Columbia University said they performed whole-genome sequencing (WGS) to identify all off-target mutations in two mice on which the CRISPR/Cas9 technique had been used to repair genes. In each mouse, they found more than 125 insertions and deletions, or indels, and more than 1,600 single-nucleotide variations. The researchers previously showed CRISPR-Cas9 successfully corrected a gene that caused blindness in those mice...