Concerns over the transmission of porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERVs) to humans are a major barrier to the use of porcine organs in transplantation. In a new study, Yang et al. used the CRISPR–Cas9 system to simultaneously inactivate the pol genes of all 62 PERVs identified within a porcine kidney epithelial cell line. Remarkably, co-culturing of porcine and human cell lines revealed a greater than 1,000-fold decrease in the transmission of PERVs to human cells from engineered cells, compared to wild-type porcine cells.
References
Yang, L. et al. Genome-wide inactivation of porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERVs). Science http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aad1191 (2015)
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Waldron, D. Porcine endogenous retroviruses get the chop. Nat Rev Genet 16, 686 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg4042
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg4042
