Australian University Develops More Accurate Gene Editing Tool SeekRNA

TapTechNews June 25th news, researchers at the University of Sydney in Australia have developed a new type of gene editing tool called SeekRNA, claiming to be more accurate than the industry standard CRISPR.

SeekRNA, a gene editing tool, mainly uses a programmable ribonucleic acid (RNA) strand to insert itself into a specific site in the gene sequence after recognizing it.

The project is led by Dr. Sandro Ataide from the School of Life and Environmental Sciences of the university, and the relevant research results have been published in Nature Communications.

Dr. Ataide said that CRISPR is the industry standard in genetic engineering and has brought revolutionary changes to multiple industries such as medicine, agriculture, and biotechnology, but this gene editing tool also has some shortcomings.

Different from CRISPR, SeekRNA does not need to cut any additional components and paste them into the gene sequence. SeekRNA is an independent cut-and-paste tool with higher accuracy.

Another drawback of CRISPR is that it depends on the target DNA, which will cause breaks on both strands (that is, the double helix strand that usually describes the DNA sequence).

Although CRISPR itself is indeed impressive, it needs to use proteins or DNA repair mechanisms to insert new DNA sequences into the specified positions, and errors may occur during this process.

Dr. Ataide stated:

SeekRNA can precisely cleave the target site and insert a new DNA sequence without using any other proteins, making the editing tool more concise, more accurate, and with fewer errors.

We are extremely excited about the potential of this technology. The precise and flexible targeted selection ability of SeekRNA lays the foundation for a new era of genetic engineering, going beyond the limitations of existing technologies.

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