Biotech Updates

Researchers at the University of Connecticut's Department of Biomedical Engineering are working to develop a new, low-cost, CRISPR-based diagnostic platform to detect infectious diseases, including the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). Associate Professor Changchun Liu developed the "All-In-One-Dual CRISPR-Cas12a" (AIOD-CRISPR) method to enable simple, rapid, ultrasensitive, visual detection of SARS-CoV-2 and HIV viruses, intended for use at home or in small clinics.

Biotech Stacks Adoption Continues to Increase Globally

The biotech method of gene stacking has brought us many notable products such as Golden Rice, Blue Rose, and SmartStax™. What is gene stacking and why is there a ‘stack boom' in the biotech crop market? What does the future hold for biotech stacks?

Scientists Optimize Prime Editing for Rice and Wheat

David R. Liu and his colleagues at Harvard University have developed prime editing, a new genome editing approach, which uses engineered Cas9 nickase (H840A)-reverse transcriptase (RT) fusion proteins paired with a prime editing guide RNA (pegRNA). Prof. Gao Caixia and his team at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences reported the optimization of a prime editing system (PPE system) for creating desired point mutations, insertions, and deletions in two major cereal crops, rice, and wheat. The main components of a PPE system are a Cas9 nickase-RT fusion protein and a pegRNA.