Generation of gene-modified mice via Cas9/RNA-mediated gene targeting

• 来源期刊: 细胞研究（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2013,（5）
• 页码范围: 720-723
• 页数: 4页
• 语种: 英文
• DOI: 10.1038/cr.2013.46

摘要

Dear Editor, Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated (Cas) adaptive immune systems are found in bacteria and archaea to protect the hosts against the invasion of viruses and plasmids [1-3].Three types (I-III) of CRISPR systems with different features have been identified.The CRISPR-associated protein Cas9 that belongs to the type II CRISPR/Cas system has attracted much attention due to its potential use in genomic engineering.Cas9 contains one HNH motif and three RuvC-like motifs,homologous to HNH and RuvC endonucleases,respectively (Supplementary information,Figure S1) [4-8].Recent studies showed that Cas9 displayed strong DNA cleavage activity in bacteria and in test tubes.Its nuclease activity is guided by two non-coding RNA elements of the system;one is crRNA (CRISPR RNA) that contains about 20 base pairs (bp) of unique target sequence (called spacer sequence) and the other is tracrRNA (trans-activating crRNA).