CRISPR-Cas14 is now part of the artillery for gene editing and molecular diagnostic

Abstract

Recently Jennifer Doudna's group discovered the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)-CRISPR associated protein 14 (Cas14), identified almost exclusively in a superphylum of extremophile archaea. The newly discovered Cas14 possesses a single-stranded (ss)DNA targeting activity - despite being two times smaller than Cas9 - a capability that might confer a defense against viruses with ssDNA genomes. Furthermore, by combining the non-specific ssDNase cleavage activity of Cas14 with isothermal amplification method (DETECTR-Cas14), it can also be promisingly exploited for high-fidelity DNA single-nucleotide polymorphism genotyping, and potentially for detecting ssDNA viruses of undeniable clinical, ecological, and economic importance infecting hosts in all three domains of life. Thus, CRISPR-Cas14 might acquire an exponential expansion in the field of CRISPR diagnostic for infectious and noninfectious diseases.

Keywords: CRISPR-Cas14; DETECTR; Genotyping; Molecular diagnostic; ssDNA.