{"id":122503,"date":"2021-05-11T16:23:34","date_gmt":"2021-05-11T23:23:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/a-new-gene-editing-tool-could-rival-crispr-and-makes-millions-of-edits-at-once"},"modified":"2021-05-11T16:23:34","modified_gmt":"2021-05-11T23:23:34","slug":"a-new-gene-editing-tool-could-rival-crispr-and-makes-millions-of-edits-at-once","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/a-new-gene-editing-tool-could-rival-crispr-and-makes-millions-of-edits-at-once","title":{"rendered":"A New Gene Editing Tool Could Rival CRISPR, and Makes Millions of Edits at Once"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/a-new-gene-editing-tool-could-rival-crispr-and-makes-millions-of-edits-at-once2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>First discovered in 1984, retrons are floating ribbons of DNA in some bacteria cells that can be converted into a specific type of DNA\u2014a single chain of DNA bases dubbed ssDNAs (yup, it\u2019s weird). But that\u2019s fantastic news for gene editing, because our cells\u2019 double-stranded DNA sequences become impressionable single chains when they divide. Perfect timing for a retron bait-and-switch.<\/p>\n<p>Normally, our DNA exists in double helices that are tightly wrapped into 23 bundles, called chromosomes. Each chromosome bundle comes in two copies, and when a cell divides, the copies separate to duplicate themselves. During this time, the two copies sometimes swap genes in a process called recombination. This is when retrons can sneak in, inserting their ssDNA progeny into the dividing cell instead. If they carry new tricks\u2014say, allowing a bacteria cell to become resistant against drugs\u2014and successfully insert themselves, then the cell\u2019s progeny will inherit that trait.<\/p>\n<p>Because of the cell\u2019s natural machinery, retrons can infiltrate a genome without cutting it. And they can do it in millions of dividing cells at the same time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First discovered in 1984, retrons are floating ribbons of DNA in some bacteria cells that can be converted into a specific type of DNA\u2014a single chain of DNA bases dubbed ssDNAs (yup, it\u2019s weird). But that\u2019s fantastic news for gene editing, because our cells\u2019 double-stranded DNA sequences become impressionable single chains when they divide. Perfect [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122503\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}