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Aconsortium of 17 laboratories worldwide has presented results contradicting a highly cited study that described a technique to create conditional knockout mice using CRISPR. The preprint, published on bioRxiv on September 1, shows a much lower efficiency rate for the technique compared to the original report.
The results of the new study indicate the limitations of the original study, whose success appears to be relegated to deleting a specific gene within a hybrid mouse strain. The lead author of the first report, cited nearly 1,000 times by Google Scholar’s count, stands by the strength of his method.
Before the original study, published in 2013 by geneticist Rudolf Jaenisch at the Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research and colleagues, embryonic stem cells were used to prepare conditional knockout mice—animals with a gene engineered to be turned off on command that are missing a gene—a process that could take ...
