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Review
. 2023 Mar 9:11:1143157.
doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2023.1143157. eCollection 2023.

Off-target effects in CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing

Congting Guo  1   2 , Xiaoteng Ma  3 , Fei Gao  3 , Yuxuan Guo  1   2   4   5
Affiliations
Review

Off-target effects in CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing

Congting Guo et al. Front Bioeng Biotechnol. .

Abstract

Gene editing stands for the methods to precisely make changes to a specific nucleic acid sequence. With the recent development of the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/Cas9 system, gene editing has become efficient, convenient and programmable, leading to promising translational studies and clinical trials for both genetic and non-genetic diseases. A major concern in the applications of the CRISPR/Cas9 system is about its off-target effects, namely the deposition of unexpected, unwanted, or even adverse alterations to the genome. To date, many methods have been developed to nominate or detect the off-target sites of CRISPR/Cas9, which laid the basis for the successful upgrades of CRISPR/Cas9 derivatives with enhanced precision. In this review, we summarize these technological advancements and discuss about the current challenges in the management of off-target effects for future gene therapy.

Keywords: CRISPR/Cas9; Cas9/sgRNA complex; gene editing; gene therapy; off-target effects.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The handling editor KW declared a shared affiliation with the author YG at the time of review.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Schematics of experimental methods for genome-wide off-target prediction.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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