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A research team led by Dr. Yong-Sam Kim at the Genome Editing Research Center, Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology developed a technology for enhancing the efficiency of CRISPR-Cpf1 system. This technology will contribute to accelerating genome editing and gene therapy.
Genome editing has progressed through the development of CRISPR/CRISPR-associated protein (Cas) system. Although CRISPR from Prevotella and Francisella 1 (Cpf1) has emerged as an alternative to CRISPR-Cas9, it has been insufficient due to target dependent, low indel efficiencies. In this research, CRISPR RNA (crRNA) was engineered to include a 20-base target-complementary sequence and uridinylate-rich 3′-overhang to complement unsatisfactory adoption of Cpf1. As a result, it was found that crRNA with a 20-base target-complementary sequence plus U4AU4 3′-overhang is the optimal configuration and U-rich crRNA maximizes the utility of AsCpf1 mutants. This engineered CRISPR-Cpf1 system is expected to enhance the efficiency of genome editing toolbox.
Further details of the research can be referred at Nature Communications online published on September 7, 2018, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-06129-w