Adenine base editors (ABEs) and cytosine base editors (CBEs) are powerful tools for targeted base conversions, but their editing specificities are largely unknown. Now, two reports demonstrate that ABEs are highly specific, but BE3-type CBEs tend to generate genome-wide off-target single nucleotide variations.
References
Chen, K., Wang, Y., Zhang, R., Zhang, H. & Gao, C. Annu. Rev. Plant Biol. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-arplant-050718-100049 (2019).
Knott, G. J. & Doudna, J. A. Science 361, 866–869 (2018).
Ma, X., Zhu, Q., Chen, Y. & Liu, Y. G. Mol. Plant 9, 961–974 (2016).
Cox, D. B., Platt, R. J. & Zhang, F. Nat. Med. 21, 121–131 (2015).
Komor, A. C., Kim, Y. B., Packer, M. S., Zuris, J. A. & Liu, D. R. Nature 533, 420–424 (2016).
Gaudelli, N. M. et al. Nature 551, 464–471 (2017).
Lu, Y. & Zhu, J. K. Mol. Plant 10, 523–525 (2017).
Zong, Y. et al. Nat. Biotechnol. 35, 438–440 (2017).
Akcakaya, P. et al. Nature 561, 416–419 (2018).
Tang, X. et al. Genome Biol. 19, 84 (2018).
Li, J. et al. Plant Biotechnol. J. https://doi.org/10.1111/pbi.13020 (2018).
Jin, S. et al. Science https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaw7166 (2019).
Zuo, E. et al. Science https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aav9973 (2019).
Harris, R. S., Petersen-Mahrt, S. K. & Neuberger, M. S. Mol. Cell 10, 1247–1253 (2002).
Radany, E. H. et al. Mutat. Res. 461, 41–58 (2000).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Tang, J., Chen, L. & Liu, YG. Off-target effects and the solution. Nat. Plants 5, 341–342 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-019-0406-z
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-019-0406-z
- Springer Nature Limited
This article is cited by
-
Usefulness of current sgRNA design guidelines and in vitro cleavage assays for plant CRISPR/Cas genome editing: a case targeting the polyphenol oxidase gene family in eggplant (Solanum melongena L.)
Transgenic Research (2023)
-
How to start your monocot CRISPR/Cas project: plasmid design, efficiency detection, and offspring analysis
Rice (2020)
-
Technological breakthroughs in generating transgene-free and genetically stable CRISPR-edited plants
aBIOTECH (2020)