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Updated: Oct 9, 2025

A New Toolkit for Evaluating Gene Functions using Conditional Cas9 Stabilization
Published on: September 2, 2021
Mechanistic insights into the versatile class II CRISPR toolbox
1HIT Center for Life Sciences, School of Life Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150080, China.
Abstract:
The constantly expanding group of class II CRISPR-Cas (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats-associated) effectors and their engineered variants exhibit distinct editing modes and efficiency, fidelity, target range, and molecular size. Their enormous diversity of capabilities provides a formidable toolkit for a large array of technologies. We review the structural and biochemical mechanisms of versatile effector proteins from class II CRISPR-Cas systems to provide mechanistic insights into their target specificity, protospacer adjacent motif (PAM) restriction, and activity regulation, and discuss possible strategies to enhance genome-engineering tools in terms of accuracy, efficiency, applicability, and controllability.
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