Xmarks the spot: Mining the gold in CasX for gene editing

In this issue of Molecular Cell, Tsuchida et al. (2022) present a successful structure-guided effort in improving genome-editing efficiencies of CRISPR-CasX from Deltaproteobacteria (DpbCasX) and Planctomycetes (PlmCasX). Engineered variants that stabilize the active conformational state improved the catalytic efficiency by-10-20 fold in vitro and mean-editing efficiency by-2-3 fold in human cells.

Automated summary

In this paper, the authors present a successful structure-guided approach to improve the genome-editing efficiency of CRISPR-CasX in Deltaproteobacteria and Planctomycetes.