Illustration: Rebecca Zisser/Axios

Two prominent teams of scientists recently announced transposons — or “jumping genes” — can improve the precision of CRISPR gene editing.

Why it matters: While this research is still in early stages, as both teams tested their techniques on bacterial cells, experts say the technique could allow edited genes to be more precisely inserted into genomes, possibly addressing concerns with current CRISPR systems that can lead to off-target editing and random deletions or even cancer.

Background: Transposons randomly jump from one site to the other, inserting genetic information as they go, using enzymes called transposases.

  • CRISPR tools currently use enzymes like Cas9 and Cas13 to cut and delete a portion of the genetic code, counting on the cell to use its repair function to glue the cut strands back together. That process sometimes introduces its own problems.
  • By combining the CRISPR tool with these transposons, which have the ability to easily introduce a large number of genes into cells, researchers hope to merge the […]
Read the Full Article