RNA interferenceWIKIMEDIA, RICHARD ROBINSON
When researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory set out to confirm cancer cells’ dependence on MELK, a gene coding for a protein kinase shown by countless RNA interference (RNAi) studies to be essential, they weren’t expecting anything unusual. But then they discovered that deleting MELK using gene editor CRISPR-Cas9 had no observable effect on cancer cells at all, turning previous research on its head.
“The study was carefully made—it was meticulous,” cancer researcher Alexey Terskikh of the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, who was not involved in the work, told The Scientist when the paper was published in eLife last month. It provides an example of “why people should use CRISPR for a more rigorous way to ask their question,” he added.
The study ...
