Applications of the CRISPR/Cas system beyond gene editing

Tobias Anton; Elisabeth Karg; Sebastian Bultmann

doi:10.1093/biomethods/bpy002

Applications of the CRISPR/Cas system beyond gene editing

Biol Methods Protoc. 2018 May 10;3(1):bpy002. doi: 10.1093/biomethods/bpy002. eCollection 2018.

Authors

Tobias Anton¹, Elisabeth Karg¹, Sebastian Bultmann¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Biology II and Center for Integrated Protein Science Munich (CIPSM), LMU Munich, 82152 Martinsried, Germany.

Abstract

Since the discovery of the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated system (Cas) as a tool for gene editing a plethora of locus-specific as well as genome-wide approaches have been developed that allow efficient and reproducible manipulation of genomic sequences. However, the seemingly unbound potential of CRISPR/Cas does not stop with its utilization as a site-directed nuclease. Mutations in its catalytic centers render Cas9 (dCas9) a universal recruitment platform that can be utilized to control transcription, visualize DNA sequences, investigate in situ proteome compositions and manipulate epigenetic modifications at user-defined genomic loci. In this review, we give a comprehensive introduction and overview of the development, improvement and application of recent dCas9-based approaches.

Keywords: CASPEX; CRISPR imaging; CRISPR/Cas; CRISPRa; CRISPRi; CasID; dCas9.

Publication types

Review