A rare mosaic female fly, with a lighter left half mutated by MCR and a wild-type darker right half.UCSD, VALENTINO GANTZ AND ETHAN BIER
A new genetic-editing technique based on integrating CRISPR/Cas9 technology into a Drosophila melanogaster genome can make homozygous mutants in half the time it would take using traditional crosses, according to a paper published today (March 19) in Science.
“The study is well done and also very elegant,” said Ji-Long Liu of the University of Oxford who was not involved in the research, but helped to develop CRISPR/Cas9 in Drosophila. Liu called the method “a really clever way to . . . make the magic happen.”
The CRISPR/Cas9 system requires two components: a guide RNA that matches the region of the genome to be cleaved, and an enzyme, Cas9, that cuts the DNA. Often, these two elements are transiently expressed in the cells or organism of ...
