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RNA splicing

Harnessing introns to monitor gene expression

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Several new technologies have used synthetic RNAs that leverage the cell’s RNA splicing machinery to drive the expression of gene products. A new study now reports a technique to dynamically and non-invasively monitor gene expression by embedding reporters within introns contained in the parent gene.

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Fig. 1: Methods to measure and regulate gene expression using splicing of synthetic RNA sequences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program, Dept. of Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA

    Salima Benbarche & Omar Abdel-Wahab

Authors
  1. Salima Benbarche
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  2. Omar Abdel-Wahab
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Omar Abdel-Wahab.

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Competing interests

S.B. declares no competing interests. O.A.-W. has served as a consultant for H3B Biomedicine, Foundation Medicine, Merck and Janssen, and is on the Scientific Advisory Board of Pfizer Boulder, Envisagenics and AIChemy; O.A.-W. has received previous research funding from H3B Biomedicine, Loxo/Lilly and Nurix Therapeutics unrelated to the current manuscript.

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Benbarche, S., Abdel-Wahab, O. Harnessing introns to monitor gene expression. Nat Cell Biol 24, 1571–1573 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41556-022-01003-w

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