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In 2015, Feng Zhang’s lab characterized two Cpf1 nucleases, distant cousins of well-known Cas9. Cpf1 cleaves DNA in a staggered pattern and requires only one RNA rather than the two (tracrRNA and crRNA) needed by Cas9 for cleavage. Now, two new studies show that Cpf1 displays lower off-target editing than Cas9, confirming that this protein is well suited for genome editing. 

Find Cpf1 Plasmids at Addgene

This post was contributed by guest bloggers, Wenning Qin and Haoyi Wang.

CRISPR/Cas9 is revolutionizing the mouse gene-targeting field. Mice have long been extremely useful in the lab – they are relatively small and easy to work with, making them the go-to choice for studying mammalian biology. Similar to any model, mice are not without their problems, but much genetic and physiological data have been accumulated over the years using them. Indeed, the future of mouse work is bright as it is now easier than ever to manipulate the mouse genome using CRISPR/Cas9.

We’ve recently begun expanding our presence in the microbiology community. For our first concrete steps into this field, we’ve curated microbiology plasmids from the repository onto one handy Microbiology Resource page and, just a few weeks ago, we attended the American Society for Microbiology's annual meeting (ASM Microbe 2016) for the first time. Our goals at the meeting were to network with scientists in this diverse and exciting field and to find out how we can serve them better. Here’s a little bit of what we learned.

Have you ever tried digesting with XbaI or ClaI restriction enzymes and gotten unusual or unexpected results? Or considered why DpnI will degrade your template DNA from a PCR reaction but not the newly synthesized product from a site-directed mutagenesis experiment? The answer to both questions is the same--methylation! Read on to learn about how DNA methylation may affect your restriction digests.

This post was contributed by guest blogger Samantha Young.

The use of CRISPR/Cas9 for gene editing has expanded since its adaptation for use in mammalian cells in 2012-2013. Researchers are now using this system in ever more creative ways, (Wang et al., 2013, Cho et al., 2014). There are several variants of the CRISPR/Cas9 system floating around, and many pre-designed plasmids containing these variants ready for purchase. But what is the easiest and fastest way to use the system in mice? We'll have a post that goes into the mouse genome editing process in a bit more detail in the coming weeks, but, in this post, we will outline a simple method for selecting the guide RNA, validating its efficacy in vitro, and using it in mouse embryos to generate gene modified mouse lines. Hopefully this post will help get your in vivo research up and running as soon as possible!