Editing translation

CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna has expanded the technology’s reach to diseases involving RNA targets with a new publication showing at least two of the CRISPR-based systems used to edit nuclear DNA can also bind and cleave cytosolic RNA.

In an eLife paper this month, Doudna and colleagues at the University of California Berkeley showed that CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9) enzymes from Staphylococcus aureus and Campylobacter jejuni are capable of cleaving RNA targets, and can be directed to specific target sequences by complementary RNA guide strands...