Topic
Techniques that make targeted changes to an organism's DNA, such as CRISPR, integrases and retrotransposons, to insert, delete or rewrite genes.
University of Chicago researchers used cryo-EM to capture large serine integrases at several stages of inserting and removing phage DNA. The Molecular Cell paper shows how a partner protein flips the enzyme from one job to the other.
Reality
Columbia researchers report DRT10, a bacterial antiviral system whose reverse transcriptase writes repeat DNA by a route that parallels human telomerase. The Nature abstract reports bacterial biochemistry, structures and phylogenetics, and Sternberg calls the editing and telomere-repair uses early days.
Reality
Researchers found 159 R2 retrotransposons in 1,139 avian genomes and engineered variants that reached up to 60% gene insertion in human primary cells. These are RNA-only tools, able to add a gene to the genome without delivering any DNA to the cell.
Reality
The company's new life sciences group says agents working from a single prompt flagged an enzyme system with CRISPR-like DNA repeats, and its scientists are still running experiments to find out what the system actually does.
Reality
An international team maps a Scleraxis enhancer conserved from coelacanths to humans. Delete its 343 bp core and the mouse limb loses a bone ridge, not a tendon.
Reality