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A more precise way to edit the genome


MIT researchers have dramatically lowered the error rate of prime editing, a genome-editing technique based on CRISPR. This advance could make it easier to develop gene therapy treatments for a variety of diseases.

MIT researchers have now found a way to dramatically lower the error rate of prime editing, using modified versions of the proteins involved in the process. “This paper outlines a new approach to doing gene editing that doesn’t complicate the delivery system and doesn’t add additional steps, but results in a much more precise edit with fewer unwanted mutations,” says Phillip Sharp, an MIT Institute Professor Emeritus, a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, and one of the senior authors of the new study. In 2019, researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard reported the development of prime editing: a new system, based on CRISPR, that is more precise and has fewer off-target effects.

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