Preface to the special topic on genome editing research in China

• 来源期刊: 国家科学评论（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2019,（3）
• 页码范围: 389-390
• 页数: 2页
• 语种: 英文
• DOI: 10.1093/nsr/nwz054

摘要

Genome engineering technologies enable the precise modification, regulation and tagging of genomic loci in living cells and organisms, leading to a broad range of applications from basic biology to biotechnology and biomedicine.For many years, precise genome manipulation has heavily relied on the homologous recombination (HR)-based gene targeting strategy, which has been limited to several organisms (yeast, mouse and human).However, recent revolutionary findings on bacterial RNA-guided clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)-Cas systems have led to a range of simple, fast and efficient genome engineering technologies, which are applicable to a wide range of organisms, including species that are recalcitrant to genetic manipulation via the traditional HR-based method.With its rapid development over the past few years, CRISPR-Cas9 and its variants have become the most powerful and versatile platforms for genetic and epigenetic editing, and can efficiently fulfill targeted genome editing, gene expression regulation, genome imaging, epigenetic modifications, base mutations and functional genomic screening.Obviously, CRISPR-Cas9 technologies, after overcoming the difficulties in genomic modifications that used to cause a bottleneck in the post-genomic era, will pave the way for the progress of functional genomics and promote its broad application in biotechnology and biomedicine, such as in the generation of disease models to reveal pathological mechanisms and enable drug discovery, the enhancement of crop and livestock production to obtain high-quality agricultural products, the construction of transgenic bioreactors to obtain bioproducts at low cost such as biofuels and the development of genetic therapies to cure human diseases.