Chinese scientists have developed a gene editing technology capable of precisely manipulating large DNA segments ranging from thousands to millions of base pairs in both plant and animal cells, marking a significant advance in the field of life sciences.
The research team from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced the new technology in a study published online Monday in the journal Cell.
The method, called PCE (Programmable Chromosomal Engineering), combines three innovative techniques to enable programmable editing of large chromosome segments. In lab tests, researchers successfully inserted an 18,800-base-pair DNA fragment, replaced a 5,000-base-pair sequence, inverted a 12-million-base-pair chromosomal region, deleted a 4-million-base-pair segment, and even relocated entire chromosomes.
Reviewers of the study hailed the work as "a major breakthrough in genetic engineering" with vast potential applications in crop breeding and gene therapy. (ECNS)
A team led by Prof. GAO Caixia from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences developed two new genome editing technologies, known collectively as Programmable Chromosome Engineering (PCE) systems to achieves multiple types of precise DNA manipulations ranging from kilobase to megabase scale in higher organisms, especially plants.
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