Gene Drive Supplement

Development of CRISPR-Cas9-based Gene Drive in Budding Yeast

April 27, 2022

A research team at Kansas State University conducted a study to use budding yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) as a model to develop a CRISPR-Cas9-based gene drive.

S. cerevisiae is a popular model organism in studying the fundamental aspects of molecular and cellular biology. Researchers use it to assess the technical feasibility of new technologies in eukaryotic cells. In this study, the researchers applied CRISPR-Cas9 to develop an artificial gene drive system in budding yeast that can edit several locations in the DNA simultaneously.

Results showed that the triple gene drive system can effectively edit three DNA targets independently using only a single copy of Cas9. The occurrence of non-homologous end joining could be impeded through modifications in DNA Ligase IV. However, successful gene drives still led to a small number of resistant or inactive clones, which was found to be caused by imperfect activation of the inducible promoter driving expression of the Cas9 nuclease or issues with multiplexing to artificial sequences.

Read more findings from Kansas State University.


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