Hans-Hermann Wessels, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Scientist
1. New York Genome Center, New York, NY, USA.
2. Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, Department of Biology, New York University, New York, NY, USA
New frontiers in transcriptome engineering with CRISPR-Cas13
With the discovery of RNA-targeting CRISPR effectors (i.e., Cas13d), we now have the capability to directly target RNA with high efficiency and specificity. This Cas13d-mediated target RNA knockdown can be superior to existing DNA-targeting CRISPR technologies, enabling unambiguous targeting of non-coding RNAs, RNA isoforms, or RNA viruses; and delivery of multiple guide RNAs (gRNAs) at the same time. Here, I am highlighting the utility of Cas13d for the scientific community, first by thoroughly defining the requirements for gRNA design and by developing a pipeline for transcriptome-wide forward genetic pooled screens. And finally, by combining the high throughput of pooled Cas13 screens with content-rich phenotyping of single-cell perturbation approaches to study genetic interactions with multimodal readout.
