Genome-wide identification of CRISPR/Cas9 off-targets in human genome

摘要

Dear Editor, Genome editing techniques have been rapidly developing in recent decades [1].Among them,sitespecific cleavage of genomic loci in various organisms by homing endonucleases (HEases) [2],Zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs) [3],transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) [4],and most recently the CRISPR (clustered regularly interspersed short palindromic repeats)/Cas9 system [5],has been utilized widely not only in laboratories but also for translational studies.The central issue of genome editing is how to achieve specific and robust recognition of particular genomic sequences.In the case of HEases,ZFNs,and TALENs,this is achieved by specific intermolecular interactions between nucleotides and protein motifs,while for CRISPR/ Cas9,the specificity is due to Watson-Crick base pairing between CRISPR RNA (crRNA) and its recognition sequences.