The Year in CRISPRs - 17

The Year in CRISPRs * Using CRISPR as a High-Throughput Cancer Screening and Modeling Tool

director emeritus from the Sanger Institute. "Our
results show that this approach is feasible and
productive in liver cancer; we will now continue
to study our new findings and try to extend the
approach to other cancer types."
This CRISPR-Cas9 approach may also be
favorable for an in-depth examination of genomic
deserts-regions within the human genome that
appear to be devoid of genes. Yet, recent data
from the ENCODE Project suggests that deserts
can be populated, if not by genes, then by DNA
regulatory regions that influence the activity
of genes.
"Liver cancer has many DNA alterations in
regions lacking genes: we don't know which of
these might be important for the disease," said
Dr. Rad. "However, we could show that it is
now possible to delete such regions to
systematically determine their role in liver
cancer development." n

17

| GENengnews.com

http://www.GENengnews.com

The Year in CRISPRs

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Year in CRISPRs