Group walks back CRISPR off-target mutation conclusions

In a paper published on the preprint server bioRxiv, researchers at Stanford University and Columbia University acknowledged that data reported last year showing CRISPR gene editing led to an unexpected high level of off-target mutations were unreproducible, and concluded that "CRISPR-Cas9 editing can precisely edit the genome at the organismal level and may not introduce numerous, unintended, off-target mutations."

The original data were published in a letter in Nature Methods, in which the authors said whole genome sequencing data uncovered "a significantly higher number" of mutations than predicted, and concluded that CRISPR-Cas9 (CRISPR-associated protein 9) may be much less precise than previously expected (see BioCentury Extra, May 30, 2017)...