Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Gyeong-seok Oh
• Seongjin An
• Sungchul Kim

Titel

Harnessing CRISPR-Cas adaptation for RNA recording and beyond

Ist Teil von

• BMB reports, 2024-01, Vol.57 (1), p.40-49

Ort / Verlag

생화학분자생물학회

Erscheinungsjahr

2024

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Prokaryotes encode clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR) arrays and CRISPR-associated (Cas) genes as an adaptive immune machinery. CRISPR-Cas systems effectively protect hosts from the invasion of foreign enemies, such as bacteriophages and plasmids. During a process called ‘adaptation’, non-self-nucleic acid fragments are acquired as spacers between repeats in the host CRISPR array, to establish immunological memory. The highly conserved Cas1-Cas2 complexes function as molecular recorders to integrate spacers in a time course manner, which can subsequently be expressed as crRNAs complexed with Cas effector proteins for the RNA-guided interference pathways. In some of the RNA-targeting type III systems, Cas1 proteins are fused with reverse transcriptase (RT), indicating that RT-Cas1-Cas2 complexes can acquire RNA transcripts for spacer acquisition. In this review, we summarize current studies that focus on the molecular structure and function of the RT-fused Cas1-Cas2 integrase, and its potential applications as a directional RNA-recording tool in cells. Furthermore, we highlight outstanding questions for RT-Cas1-Cas2 studies and future directions for RNA-recording CRISPR technologies. [BMB Reports 2024; 57(1): 40-49]