Genetic Engineering Publications - GEG Tech top picks

Here, the scientists systematically analyze whether CRISPR approaches are suitable to target lncRNAs. Many lncRNAs are derived from bidirectional promoters or overlap with promoters or bodies of sense or antisense genes. In a genome-wide analysis, they find only 38% of 15929 lncRNA loci are safely amenable to CRISPR applications while almost two-thirds of lncRNA loci are at risk to inadvertently deregulate neighboring genes. They conclude that, despite the advantages of CRISPR/Cas9 to modulate expression bidirectionally and in cis, approaches based on siPOOL or Antisense Oligo may be the better choice to target specifically the transcript from complex loci.