This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$29.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$259.00 per year
only $21.58 per issue
Rent or buy this article
Prices vary by article type
from$1.95
to$39.95
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Data availability
All nucleotide and protein sequences presented here come from publicly available Genbank accession nos. MK005734, CP050120, CP014749 and DUFM01000066.
References
Chylinski, K., Makarova, K. S., Charpentier, E. & Koonin, E. V. Classification and evolution of type II CRISPR-Cas systems. Nucleic Acids Res. 42, 6091–6105 (2014).
Altae-Tran, H. et al. The widespread IS200/IS605 transposon family encodes diverse programmable RNA-guided endonucleases. Science 374, 57–65 (2021).
Karvelis, T. et al. Transposon-associated TnpB is a programmable RNA-guided DNA endonuclease. Nature 599, 692–696 (2021).
Kim, D. Y. et al. Hypercompact adenine base editors based on transposase B guided by engineered RNA. Nat. Chem. Biol. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41589-022-01077-5 (2022).
Kim, D. Y. et al. Efficient CRISPR editing with a hypercompact Cas12f1 and engineered guide RNAs delivered by adeno-associated virus. Nat. Biotechnol. 40, 94–102 (2022).
Harrington, L. B. et al. Programmed DNA destruction by miniature CRISPR-Cas14 enzymes. Science 362, 839–842 (2018).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
P.Y., B.A.A. and J.A.D. conceived of the critique, performed the analyses and wrote the manuscript.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
J.A.D. is a cofounder of Caribou Biosciences, Editas Medicine, Scribe Therapeutics, Intellia Therapeutics and Mammoth Biosciences. J.A.D. is a scientific advisory board member of Vertex, Caribou Biosciences, Intellia Therapeutics, Scribe Therapeutics, Mammoth Biosciences, Algen Biotechnologies, Felix Biosciences, The Column Group, Sixth Street and Inari. J.A.D. is a Director at Johnson & Johnson, Altos and Tempus and has research projects sponsored by AppleTree Partners and Roche. All other authors declare no competing interests.
Peer review
Peer review information
Nature Chemical Biology thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
Supplementary information
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Yoon, P.H., Adler, B.A. & Doudna, J.A. To TnpB or not TnpB? Cas12 is the answer. Nat Chem Biol 19, 263–264 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41589-022-01243-9
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41589-022-01243-9
This article is cited by
-
Author Correction: Hypercompact adenine base editors based on a Cas12f variant guided by engineered RNA
Nature Chemical Biology (2023)