Can you cut the tumor gene in a beam of light? East China Normal University has developed a new optical control gene editing system.

Can light also be used as a switch to control gene editing and even cancer treatment? Photo source: Science advancedjuly 11, surging news learned from East China Normal University that a new light controlled split-cas9 gene editing system (fast system) has been successfully developed by the Faculty of life sciences of East China Normal University and ye Haifeng researcher team of medical synthetic biology research center of East China Normal University.the switch of the system is far red light with a wavelength of 730 nm, which can be emitted by a specific LED light source.in the early morning of July 11, related papers were published in the international academic journal science advances, with the title of "construction of a far red light regulated gene editing system for in vivo tissue and organ gene editing".according to the researchers, crispr-cas9 gene editing technology, as a new third generation gene editing technology in recent years, not only ensures good targeting efficiency, but also is more simple, fast and efficient, and the cost is greatly reduced. It has attracted the attention of the scientific community and has become a landmark biotechnology in the history of life science.however, the application of crispr-cas9 system will produce Miss target effect due to its uncontrollability, which will bring serious and unpredictable side effects; in addition, it can not realize the precise gene editing of space-time specificity.in order to solve the above problems, this study used low-intensity far red light as a control method, which could accurately control gene editing of deep tissues and organs in vivo in time and space.the researchers tested the potential of the fast system for disease treatment in A549, a mouse xenograft tumor model.they delivered the fast system to the tumor in mice, and then cut the tumor oncogene Plk1 by the far red light of LED.the experimental results showed that the growth of tumor could be significantly inhibited.cell experiments showed that the system could induce the editing of single or multiple endogenous genes, including non homologous end joining (NHEJ) and homologous directed repair (HDR) in a variety of mammalian cells cultured in vitro, and there was almost no background leakage under dark conditions.in animal experiments, the system was delivered to the liver of [GT (Rosa) 26sortm14 (CAG tdtomato) HZE, containing loxP stop loxP tdtomato cassette] mice.the red fluorescent protein tdtomato can be expressed only when the DNA of loxP stop loxP stop signal region is cut and edited by cas9.therefore, by observing the expression of tdtomato in the liver of mice, we can know the DNA Editing in liver cells.the results of liver imaging and frozen section showed that tdtomato gene expression was significantly higher in the light group than in the control group.Image Source: the above research results show that the system has the advantages of low background leakage, low miss target effect, low toxicity, high spatiotemporal specificity, accuracy and strong tissue penetration, providing a new controllable gene editing tool.researcher Ye Haifeng said that as a precise and spatiotemporal controllable gene editing technology platform, the research expanded the current crispr-cas9 gene editing toolbox, which is expected to be applied to the research of gene function and the precise and controllable treatment of genetic diseases, tumors and other diseases.this study is a further achievement based on the photogenetics research of Ye Haifeng's research group in recent years. in 2017, the research group published a cover research article in the journal Science Translational Medicine, using far red light to control gene expression, realizing the goal of ultra remote control of insulin release from photosensitive cells by smart phones to treat diabetes, and subverted the traditional method of oral and injection hypoglycemic drugs to control blood glucose. in 2018, the research group published a research paper on PNAs, which combined the far red light regulated transgene expression control system with crispr-dcas9 technology to realize epigenetic manipulation and induce stem cells to differentiate into functional neural cells. article link: the official account is hosted by the microbiology resource center and the big data center of the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. 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