David N Fiflis, Nicolas A Rey, Harshitha Venugopal-Lavanya, Beatrice Sewell, Aaron Mitchell-Dick, Katie N Clements, Sydney Milo, Abigail R Benkert, Alan Rosales, Sophia Fergione, Aravind Asokan
Type VI CRISPR enzymes have been developed as programmable RNA-guided Cas proteins for eukaryotic RNA editing. Notably, Cas13 has been utilized for site-targeted single base edits, demethylation, RNA cleavage or knockdown and alternative splicing. However, the ability to edit large stretches of mRNA transcripts remains a significant challenge. Here, we demonstrate that CRISPR-Cas13 systems can be repurposed to assist trans-splicing of exogenous RNA fragments into an endogenous pre-mRNA transcript, a method termed CRISPR Assisted mRNA Fragment Trans-splicing (CRAFT)...
March 14, 2024: Nature Communications