3 ms·

The key advance in this work is showing a way to edit without any external inputs to the cell (in the form of DNA templates). This suggests the possibility of i

• aaavl2821 7y ago
  I'm not an expert but I believe that one of the key advances here is that this technology can introduce new DNA via more precise mechanisms, breaking just one DNA strand at a time. Current CRISPR tech involves "double stranded breaks": cutting both strands of DNA. The body has a few ways of dealing with and repairing these breaks, one of which scientists can use to insert new DNA of their choosing [0]. However in other cases the cell uses a different repair pathway that can introduce mutations (including insertions or deletions of DNA). These mutations can be harmful especially if for example they mutate a tumor suppressor gene The new approach here apparently has less of a risk of introducing these mutations bc it does not cause double strand breaks, so does not trigger potentially erroneous repairs that cause harmful mutations But I'm not an expert so if this is incorrect or if I'm missing something please chime in [0] https://blog.addgene.org/crispr-101-homology-directed-repair https://blog.addgene.org/crispr-101-homology-directed-repair