CRISPR Technology to Target RNA Viruses

 Researchers at the New York Genome Center and New York University have developed a new kind of CRISPR screen technology to target Ribonucleic acid (RNA). The findings led them to identify a critical “seed” region that is highly sensitive to mismatches between the CRISPR guide and the target. The researchers developed a machine learning-based predictive model to expedite identification of the most effective Cas13 guide RNAs; Using the model, they predicted optimized Cas13 guide RNAs for all protein-coding transcripts in the human genome. This discovery could aid scientists in designing guide RNAs to avoid off-target activity on unintended target RNAs. Both NYU and New York Genome Center are NYSERNet members. Read more here: https://bit.ly/3457Vmh