Continuous genetic recording with self-targeting CRISPR-Cas in human cells
Abstract
Technologies that enable the longitudinal tracking and recording of molecular events into genomic DNA would be useful for the detailed monitoring of cellular state in artificial and native contexts. Although previous systems have been used to memorize digital information such as the presence or absence of biological signals, tools for recording analog information such as the duration or magnitude of biological activity in human cells are needed. Here, we present Mammalian Synthetic Cellular Recorders Integrating Biological Events (mSCRIBE), a memory system for storing analog biological information in the form of accumulating DNA mutations in human cells. mSCRIBE leverages self-targeting guide RNAs (stgRNAs) that are engineered to direct Streptococcus pyogenes Cas9 cleavage against DNA loci that encode the stgRNAs, thus accumulating mutations at stgRNA loci as a record of stgRNA or Cas9 expression.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Sep 09, 2016
- Source ID
- 10.1126/science.aag0511
Entities
People
- Cheryl H. Cui
- Samuel D. Perli
- Timothy K. Lu
Organizations
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
- Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- National Institutes of Health
- National Science Foundation
- Office of Naval Research