ISTOCK, BEHOLDINGEYEBase editing is a relatively recent genome-editing technique that swaps one DNA base pair for another, offering researchers the potential to correct harmful, single-nucleotide mutations in the human genome. But current classes of base editors only allow the conversion of cytosine-guanine (C-G) base pairs to thymine-adenine (T-A) base pairs, rendering a substantial proportion of such mutations un-targetable with this approach.
Now, researchers at Harvard University have designed a new class of adenine base editors (ABEs) that can efficiently turn A-T into G-C, opening up the majority of pathogenic point mutations for editing. The team reported its findings today (October 25) in Nature.
“It’s a very elegant study,” says Andrew Bassett, head of research in cellular operations at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, who was not involved in the work. “Being able to extend [base editing] to other types is really quite important.”
Traditional CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing makes a double-stranded break in DNA in order to introduce insertions or deletions at targeted sites. But making this break can lead to a substantial number of errors at the target site, such as the random insertion or deletion ...
