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The kill-switch for CRISPR that could make gene-editing safer

How anti-CRISPR proteins and other molecules could bolster biosecurity and improve medical treatments.
  1. Elie Dolgin

    1. Elie Dolgin is a science journalist in Somerville, Massachusetts.

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Illustration by Sébastien Thibault

It started out as “sort of a stupid thing to do”, recalls Joe Bondy-Denomy, a microbiologist at the University of California, San Francisco. As a graduate student in the early 2010s, he tried to infect bacteria with viruses that, on paper, shouldn’t have stood a chance. He knew that these viruses, or phages, were susceptible to CRISPR–Cas, the bacterial defence system that scientists have harnessed as a powerful tool for gene editing. And in most cases, he was right: the CRISPR machinery chopped the incoming phages into bits. But in a few instances, against the odds, the intruders survived.

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Nature 577, 308-310 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00053-0

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 04 February 2020: An earlier version of this Feature implied that the first practical demonstration of anti-CRISPR activity was in halting the gene-editing process in human cells. In fact, it was showing that anti-CRISPRs could limit off-target effects in human cells.

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