Ridgewood NJ, MIT researchers have designed a new tool that can cut and replace genes safelt and efficiently. PASTE (Programmable Addition via Site-specific Targeting Elements) can deliver genes as long as 36,000 DNA base pairs to several types of human cells. It works by combining the precise targeting of CRISPR-Cas9 with enzymes that viruses use to insert genetic material into bacterial genomes. In tests, the researchers were able to insert genes with a success rate ranging from 5% to 60% with very few unwanted changes.
New York NY, A team led by Columbia University ’s Harris Wang has been working on doing just this for the last couple of years. Most recently, the team managed to electrically encode 72 bits of data to write the string of letters “Hello world!” into a population of bacterial cells.