By Jon CohenOct. 25, 2017 , 1:00 PM Since the start of the CRISPR craze 5 years ago, scientists have raced to invent ever-more-versatile or efficient variations of this powerful tool, which vastly simplifies the editing of DNA. Two studies published in Science and Nature this week broaden CRISPR’s reach further still, honing a subtler approach to modifying genetic material that’s called base editing. One study extends a strategy for editing DNA, whereas the other breaks new ground by base editing its molecular cousin, RNA. Both open new avenues for genetic research and even curing diseases. “One shouldn’t view base editors as better than CRISPR—they’re just different,” says David Liu, a chemist at Harvard University who pioneered DNA base editing in a paper in Nature last year and co-authored the latest Nature paper. “It’s like, what’s better, a boat or a car?” CRISPR, adapted from a primitive bacterial immune system, does its handiwork by first cutting the double-stranded DNA at a target site in a genome. Base editing, in contrast, does not cut the double helix, but instead uses enzymes to precisely rearrange some of the atoms in one of the four bases that make up DNA or RNA, converting… Read full this story
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