Emily Anderson and Clarence Mills discuss recent CRISPR modulation advancements.

CRISPR-Cas9 has been adapted for use in transcriptional modulation and epigenetic engineering with deactivated Cas9 (dCas9) systems enabling CRISPR activation (CRISPRa) and CRISPR interference (CRISPRi) applications. Recently, Horizon has focused on development with synthetic guide RNAs (gRNAs) used along with dCas9 systems for CRISPRa & CRISPRi, opening the possibility of high-throughput gene function analysis, rich phenotypic readouts, and multi-modal gene manipulation.
The session includes:
  • Enhancing endogenous gene activation levels using pools of modified synthetic guides and CRISPRa dCas9-VPR
  • Use of synthetic, arrayed formats of CRISPRi and CRISPRa to study complex readouts unavailable in pooled studies
  • How to simultaneously activate and knockout genes within the same cell
  • Comparison of Horizon’s proprietary dCas9-SALL1-SDS3 repressor to dCas9-KRAB