Scientists make precise gene edits to mitochondrial DNA for first time
By Heidi Ledford,
Nature
| 07. 08. 2020
A peculiar bacterial enzyme has allowed researchers to achieve what even the popular CRISPR–Cas9 genome-editing system couldn’t manage: targeted changes to the genomes of mitochondria, cells’ crucial energy-producing structures.
The technique — which builds on a super-precise version of gene editing called base editing — could allow researchers to develop new ways to study, and perhaps even treat, diseases caused by mutations in the mitochondrial genome. Such disorders are most often passed down maternally, and impair the cell’s ability to generate energy. Although there are only a small number of genes in the mitochondrial genome compared with the nuclear genome, these mutations can particularly harm the nervous system and muscles, including the heart, and can be fatal to people who inherit them.
But it has been difficult to study such disorders, because scientists lacked a way to make animal models with the same changes to the mitochondrial genome. The latest technique marks the first time that researchers have made such targeted changes, and could allow researchers to do this. “It’s a very exciting development,” says Carlos Moraes, a mitochondrial geneticist... see more
Related Articles
By Sarah Katz, Discover | 08.11.2020
Deaf Power Poster
As someone who was born deaf, I’m concerned about the latest application of a gene-editing tool called CRISPR 2.0. And I'm not alone. In June, researchers at Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard and MIT announced that, using mice,...
By Catherine Shaffer, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News | 08.03.2020
Just seven years ago, the Broad Institute’s Feng Zhang, PhD, and Harvard geneticist George Church, PhD, separately demonstrated that in human cell cultures, genome editing could be performed using a CRISPR system. CRISPR, which stands for clustered regularly interspaced short...
By Kevin Truong, Vice | 08.07.2020
The genealogy company Ancestry has been acquired by investment firm Blackstone for $4.7 billion, changing ownership of the company and its trove of user-submitted DNA from a set of investment firms to another private equity firm.
The announcement was made...
By Stuart A. Newman and Tina Stevens, Medium | 08.03.2020
Studies in animals, including one described recently in Wired, show that the gene manipulation technique CRISPR has a habit of inserting bacterial DNA along with the desired sequences into various sites in chromosomes, with unknown consequences. Even more alarming...