The Genschere Crispr-Cas has captured the research laboratories of this world at an unprecedented pace, as it allows precise changes in the genome and the fast and cheap. Weekly new publications on the applications of Genschere in plant breeding and medicine, and Crispr ensures that headlines, especially now that the Vision of gene ditierter people to be become a reality.

The inroads in this young branch of research shocked the scientific community as a whole. Because as great as the Potential appears, there are also limitations exist. Among other things, it always comes back to “Off-target”effects, i.e. unplanned Miscuts, which is why the Use of medicine is at the present time, quite controversial: Crispr could change as a result of accidental mutations, the function of essential genes. For this reason, researchers are looking worldwide for opportunities to control the Genschere even more precise. Researchers from Heidelberg and Berlin, have now developed a method with which Crispr-Cas can be controlled from outside with the help of light. Their results have recently been published in the journal “Nature Methods”.

Anti-proteins that prevent the Crisp-Cas

the basis of the new technology, so-called Anti-Crispr proteins that block the Genschere. These proteins, the researchers have also integrated a light sensor that originally comes from the oat plant. The hybrid molecule called “Casanova” (short for “Crispr-Cas activation by a new, optogenetisches method based on Anti-Crispr proteins”), they have introduced velvet Genschere in cell cultures. “In the dark Casanova binds efficiently to the shears, and switches these off. By blue light, the Crispr-Genschere from the Anti-Crispr Protein dissolves and becomes active,“ explains Dominik Niopek of the University of Heidelberg. Because in the case of light, the three-dimensional structure of Casanova is changing, and the Genschere.

“Here are two young technology – Crispr-Cas and Optogenetics together to grow a bit,” says Roland Eils, Director of the centre for digital health at the Berlin Institute for health research. In the case of Optogenetics, the scientists are control signals, the activity of cells with light. Previously, these will be genetically modified so that they produce proteins that are light activated. Optogenetics has its origins in the neurosciences, and made for attention-grabbing experiments: So, researchers were able to make mice at the push of a button, run in circles, in the activated nerve cells using light. In the meantime, the young discipline has branches in other Research, such as cardio-genetics or ophthalmology found.

With Casanova, you can now determine when and where the Genschere begins with your work and when you will stop again. “We are not the First to try to get Crispr to light control. But the highlight of our method is the ease and wide applicability,“ says Niopek. Holger Puchta, a Crispr expert at the Karlsruhe Institute of technology, is impressed: “The colleagues control the Crispr-Cas System, indirect light, and not only to controlled to produce mutations, but also to the Turning on of genes and fluorescent labeling sections with specific Genetic make-up.” In fact, with the Genschere not only cut DNA. Researchers use it to direct regulation of proteins targeted to a desired site in the genome.

“We select a single cell light and see what happens with this cell, if a certain Gene is activated by the Genschere or disabled. It shares faster? Or slower? Or not at all?“,Niopek explained. By the precisely pre-determinable time of genetic modification and cell-processes can now be observed, which occur in only a few minutes. “Evolutionary cells are formed so that they compensate for the disturbances quickly so you can get your function.”