Avian R2 retrotransposons used to insert DNA at set sites in human cells
Researchers searched 1,139 avian genomes and found 159 R2 retrotransposons, a Nature Biotechnology paper reports. They characterized conserved and nonconserved sequence features in the proteins and untranslated region elements. Engineered variants reached up to 60% site-specific gene integration across human primary cells. The sequencing data were submitted to the Genome Sequence Archive for Human under accession HRA013312.
The work adds tools for all-RNA-mediated genome editing. The reported integration results cover human primary cells only.
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