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In a creative feat of molecular engineering, scientists have for the first time developed a gene editing tool capable of making targeted, single base pair changes in the DNA of mitochondria. The new editor, derived from a bacterial toxin, could allow researchers to better study mitochondrial diseases ahead of possible future treatments, Science reports.
While genome editing tools such as CRISPR can easily enter the nucleus of a cell, the mitochondria are swathed in membranes, making them inaccessible to bulky CRISPR molecules. Other tools such as TALENs and ZFNs have previously passed into the mitochondria of plant and animal cells, but STAT reports that these early tools were only able to cut out and remove mutated DNA, not correct it with targeted precision. Because of the difficulty in rewriting mitochondrial DNA, scientists have struggled to create animal models of mitochondrial diseases with the same mutations to ...
