Highlights on Advanced Version of Genome Editing

DNA mismatch repair process is found to play an essential role in prime editing — an improved variant of the CRISPR/Cas system that helps introduce DNA alterations with exquisite precision as per a study at the Medical University of Vienna and the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, published in the journal Nature Communications. The revolutionary discovery of CRISPR/Cas9 (molecular scissors) has been constantly promoted for advancements for DNA alteration.

"Depending on the type of DNA damage, a cell has different cellular repair mechanisms. To find out which of these are active in prime editing, we performed a targeted genetic screening for DNA repair factors covering all known repair pathways," say the study authors.

"Our results show that the DNA repair pathway, known as mismatch repair, influences prime editing outcomes". "By removing the activity of the mismatch repair pathway from a cell, we show that the efficiency of prime editing can be increased, and its accuracy improved," says Joanna Loizou, group leader at the Center for Cancer Research at MedUni Vienna and CeMM adjunct principal investigator.

Source-Medindia