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Genome editor CRISPRs latest trick? Offering a sharper snapshot of activity inside the cell
Airplane flight recorders and body cameras help investigators make sense of complicated events. Biologists studying cells have tried to build their own data recorders, for example by linking the activity of a gene of interest to one making a fluorescent protein. Their goal is to clarify processes such as the emergence of cancer, aging, environmental impacts, and embryonic development. A new cellular recorder that borrows from CRISPR, the revolutionary genome editing tool, now offers what could be a better taping device that captures data on DNA.
In Science online this week, chemist David Liu and postdoc Weixin Tang, both of Harvard University, unveil two forms of what they call a CRISPR-mediated analog multievent recording apparatus, or CAMERA. In proof-of-concept experiments, they show in both bacterial and human cells how this tool can record exposure to light, antibiotics, and viral infection or document internal molecular events. "The study highlights the really creative ways people are harnessing discoveries in CRISPR to build these synthetic pathways," says Dave Savage, a protein engineer at the University of California, Berkeley.
Other investigators have created recording devices with CRISPR components, among them Timothy Lu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. But Lu notes that his system was limited to bacteria, and compared with CAMERA it required "an order of magnitude" more cells to reliably record signals and had a much poorer signal-to-noise ratio. The new work, he says, "is really beautiful stuff" and has "a level of efficiency and precision that goes beyond what we did earlier." (Lu this week plans to release a preprint describing a system similar to one version of CAMERA.)
In Science online this week, chemist David Liu and postdoc Weixin Tang, both of Harvard University, unveil two forms of what they call a CRISPR-mediated analog multievent recording apparatus, or CAMERA. In proof-of-concept experiments, they show in both bacterial and human cells how this tool can record exposure to light, antibiotics, and viral infection or document internal molecular events. "The study highlights the really creative ways people are harnessing discoveries in CRISPR to build these synthetic pathways," says Dave Savage, a protein engineer at the University of California, Berkeley.
Other investigators have created recording devices with CRISPR components, among them Timothy Lu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. But Lu notes that his system was limited to bacteria, and compared with CAMERA it required "an order of magnitude" more cells to reliably record signals and had a much poorer signal-to-noise ratio. The new work, he says, "is really beautiful stuff" and has "a level of efficiency and precision that goes beyond what we did earlier." (Lu this week plans to release a preprint describing a system similar to one version of CAMERA.)