Zhang Feng's team re-published "Science", which is expected to promote the next revolution in genome editing technology

On September 9, local time, the top academic journal "Science" published a new paper led by Professor Zhang Feng, a well-known scholar in the field of gene editing

In this paper, Professor Zhang Feng's team started from the origin of the CRISPR-Cas system and identified a new type of nuclease in bacteria, which is guided by the RNA encoded by the transposon to a target location to cut DNA

In the last decade, the CRISPR-Cas system found in bacteria has become a widely used gene editing tool

The clue comes from the protein IscB encoded by a subset of the IS200/IS605 transposon family

Researchers used evolutionary analysis, RNA sequencing, and biochemical experiments to reconstruct the evolution of the CRISPR-Cas9 system from the IS200/IS605 transposon

In the process, the researchers also discovered that in addition to IscB, there are two transposon-encoded proteins, IsrB and TnpB, that also have nuclease activity targeting double-stranded DNA and are guided by ωRNA

Since the genes encoding IscB, IsrB, and TnpB exist in the transposon, with each movement of the transposon, a new guide RNA will be produced, which guides the encoded enzyme to cut at a new target site

The researchers named this programmable DNA modification system Obligate Mobile Element Guided Activity, or OMEGA for short

Taken together, the nucleases found in this study are abundant and widely expressed in bacteria, indicating that the mechanism guided by RNA is more abundant in prokaryotes than previously thought

Note: The original text has been deleted

Reference materials:

[1] Han Altae-Tran et al.

[2] New programmable gene editing proteins found outside of CRISPR systems.