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Parasitology

CRISPR for Cryptosporidium

Nature volume 523, pages 413–414 (2015)Cite this article

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Study of the diarrhoea-causing pathogen Cryptosporidium has been hindered by a lack of genetic-modification and culture tools. A description of genome editing and propagation methods for the parasite changes this picture. See Letter p.477

A common saying to stymied travellers in New England is, “You can't get there from here.” Until recently, this was also true for scientific travellers wishing to study the widespread diarrhoeal agent Cryptosporidium using modern molecular genetics. But on page 477 of this issue, Vinayak et al.1 show that indeed 'one can get there'. Their report of genetic modification of these unicellular organisms using CRISPR/Cas9 technology opens up a bold new era in the study of this pathogen.

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Figure 1: Modification and culture of Cryptosporidium.

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  1. Stephen M. Beverley is in the Department of Molecular Microbiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, Missouri 63110, USA.,

    Stephen M. Beverley

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  1. Stephen M. Beverley
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Correspondence to Stephen M. Beverley.

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Beverley, S. CRISPR for Cryptosporidium. Nature 523, 413–414 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14636

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