Scientists can guide the scissors to the place they want to cut in an organism's genetic instruction book with a guide RNA that matches
DNA at the target site.
Doudna and her research group have focused on the Type II system which relies exclusively upon RNA - programmed Cas9 to cleave double - stranded
DNA at target sites.
Not exact matches
In early experiments, the group observed that these off -
target effects could occur
at some
DNA sites with nearly the same frequency as the desired edits.
For editing the genome, this system makes use of 3 components, a guide RNA (gRNA) of about 125 nt that specifies the
target, the Cas9 endonuclease that creates the
DNA double - strand break (DSB)
at the
target site, and a donor oligonucleotide or plasmid as the repair material if needed (for knock in models).
They discovered that the
DNA repair outcomes, namely the collection of insertions and deletions that are produced by the cellular repair machinery following
DNA cutting, generate reproducible patterns
at each
target site.
Once injected inside a cell CRISPR / Cas9 will bind to the band - tailed pigeon genome
at these
target sites and cut the
DNA.
While it's extremely precise, it occasionally modifies
DNA at similar
sites elsewhere in the genome instead of the
target gene.
These potential off -
target sites were analyzed by
DNA sequencing, but no unwanted mutation occurred
at these genomic
sites in all cloned goats (Table S2).
Once injected inside a cell CRISPR / Cas9 will bind to the band - tailed pigeon genome
at these
target sites and cut the
DNA.