A practical DNA sequencer based on nanopores has now demonstrated interesting performance and may be on the way to capturing a significant slice of the sequencing market while opening up new application fields thanks to ...

Targeted modification of genes (“gene editing”) is made much easier by the recently developed CRISPR-Cas9 system. This has raised alarm about possible uses of this technology for germline modification of the human genome; ...

A newly developed technique allows the analysis of gene expression within tissues at near-cellular resolution. This opens a whole range of applications and will be a major ingredient of future studies.

A novel gene editing procedure based on a nuclease from the Argonaute protein family was described in mid-2016 and appeared to provide significant advantages over the now widely used CRISPR-Cas9 system. Attempts by numerous ...

Recent efforts at gene therapy for haemophilia A and B using AAV-derived vectors show durable expression of coagulation factors at significant levels, resulting in almost complete correction of the phenotype. This is the ...

Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria (acute premature aging) is caused by a de novo point mutation in the lamin A gene. Recently, this mutation has been accurately corrected by base editing in patient cell lines and in a mouse ...

Recent work on bacterial insertion sequences reveals that some of them use an RNA sequence (called Bridge RNA or Seek RNA) to define both donor and target DNA specificity. This opens the way to easy insertion of kilobase ...

In vivo inactivation of a deleterious gene has been achieved in a small trial, with excellent clinical results. Interestingly, the delivery and editing system is the same as in previous work on a different disease, and the ...