{"id":246601,"date":"2026-11-05T02:50:59","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T08:50:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/new-crispr-proteins-expand-editing-access-to-heart-disease-genes"},"modified":"2026-11-05T02:50:59","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T08:50:59","slug":"new-crispr-proteins-expand-editing-access-to-heart-disease-genes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/new-crispr-proteins-expand-editing-access-to-heart-disease-genes","title":{"rendered":"New CRISPR proteins expand editing access to heart disease genes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Rice University\u2019s Han Xiao has used his AI-supported Sequence Display technology to expand the targeting abilities of CRISPR\/Cas9. In a paper recently <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-026-79035-1\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Nature Communications<\/i>, Xiao evolved several variants of a compact Cas9 that could efficiently target stretches of DNA previously inaccessible for editing. The research included a proof-of-concept study in which the evolved Cas9s were successfully used to edit two genes found in coronary heart disease.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy team used <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2026-04-protein-breakthrough-generates-10m-turbocharges.html\" target=\"_blank\">Sequence Display technology<\/a> to evolve a compact Cas9 that can efficiently target priority areas of DNA,\u201d said Xiao, a professor of chemistry and corresponding author on this paper. \u201cThis shows the power of our approach, which rapidly generates large datasets that AI can use to identify optimal protein sequences for a given function. In this case, it allowed us to evolve several new Cas9 variants with better activities.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rice University\u2019s Han Xiao has used his AI-supported Sequence Display technology to expand the targeting abilities of CRISPR\/Cas9. In a paper recently published in Nature Communications, Xiao evolved several variants of a compact Cas9 that could efficiently target stretches of DNA previously inaccessible for editing. The research included a proof-of-concept study in which the evolved [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246601","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\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}