Aug10

This Week in CRISPR – Skin Grafts, HIV Resistance and the Rice Research Toolbox

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Struggling to keep up with the latest news from the world of CRISPR? We’ve got you covered – here’s a whistle-stopped tour of the internet for scientists and researchers who want to keep up to date with what’s happening in the world of CRISPR.

This week we find out how CRISPR could one day take the place of insulin shots for people with type 2 diabetes. We hear about the research work that has engineered resistance to HIV in mice, ask the question, “Could we encode medical records into our DNA?” and look to gene editing as the most environmentally friendly approach to plant breeding.

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Jul31

This Week in CRISPR – Gene Drives, Bioterrorism and Biotech Books

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Keeping up with the news that surrounds CRISPR technology can be overwhelming. We’ve got you covered – we’ve picked 5 of the biggest and most exciting recent CRISPR stories to keep you up to date without too much effort.

This week we find out how CRISPR gene drives might be easily thwarted, discover how CRISPR restores muscle function in mice, and ask why we can’t just edit unwanted genes out of our lives. We also give you some ideas on summer reads from the biotech world.

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Jun16

This Week in CRISPR – CRISPR Milk, Screening for Parkinson’s & Unearthing the ‘Dark Genome’

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Keeping up with the news that surrounds CRISPR technology can be overwhelming. We’ve got you covered – we’ve picked 5 of the biggest and most exciting recent CRISPR stories to keep you up to date without too much effort. This week we hear about a new initiative aiming to improve milk yield in Indian cattle, discuss the potential for CRISPR to cure all genetic disease and take a look at a new screening tool for Parkinson’s.

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Jun02

This Week in CRISPR – Super Mario, CRISPR in Technicolor and Designing CRISPR Guides is Easier Than Ever

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Keeping up with the news that surrounds CRISPR technology can be overwhelming. We’ve got you covered – we’ve picked 5 of the biggest and most exciting recent CRISPR stories to keep you up to date without too much effort. This week we see CRISPR making its way into middle-school classrooms, designing patterns in Technicolor, as well as being used to program living cells.

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May22

This Week in CRISPR – Eliminating HIV, Seedless Fruit & Amazon’s Alexa

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Keeping up with the news that surrounds CRISPR technology can be overwhelming. We’ve got you covered – we’ve picked out 5 of the biggest and most exciting CRISPR stories of the past week to keep you up to date without too much effort. This week we tell you about the new CRISPR mouse model that could speed up colon cancer research, the live animals that CRISPR has eliminated HIV from, and how Amazon’s Alexa might make lab life easier in the future.

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Apr13

6 Myths About in vitro-transcribed Guide RNAs

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6 Myths About IVT Guide RNAsCRISPR/Cas9 technology relies on two critical components; the Cas9 endonuclease protein that cuts DNA, and the guide RNA (gRNA) that directs Cas9 to its target sequence. The gRNA includes a sequence of 17-20 nucleotides that is unique and tailored to the locus of interest.

The task of designing, synthesizing and delivering these distinct gRNAs can be done by researchers in their own labs; a process that has been implemented for years.

Until the recent emergence of synthetic single guide RNAs (sgRNA), the in vitro transcription (IVT) approach was the most common method. IVT relies on a kit to produce a DNA template to make gRNA, which is then integrated into cells. When IVT was first introduced, it was quick and cheap when compared to previously used methods such as plasmid-based approaches. However, new technology has enabled the production of high efficiency, cost-effective synthetic gRNAs which have surpassed the, now outdated, IVT methods.

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Mar01

Keep it Clean: Evaluating a CRISPR Transfection Add-On

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Keep it Clean - Evaluating a CRISPR Transfection Add-OnThe rapid pace of innovation in the CRISPR field can often make it difficult to discern which new developments are in fact improvements to the state of the art. An excellent criterion for judging improvements in the field asks the question: does a tool holistically improve quality and ease-of-use across the board, without any significant drawbacks?

With this question in mind, we explore the possibility of adding electroporation enhancer carrier DNA to improve transfection efficiencies in genome editing systems.

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Jan27

This Week in CRISPR – Biomanufacturing, Immunodeficiency and Hangover-free Wine

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Keeping up with the news that surrounds CRISPR technology can be overwhelming. We’ve got you covered – we’ve picked out 5 of the biggest and most exciting CRISPR stories of the past week to keep you up to date without too much effort. This week we’ll look at emerging CRISPR applications in various fields such as biomanufacturing and wine making, as well as uncover a so-called “molecular Lego” system that could improve the current CRISPR system.

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