Over a decade ago, CRISPR technology shook the world with its promise of bestowing on scientists previously unimaginable genetic engineering capabilities. Although it continues to improve, this technology is still not precise enough, it causes many off-target mutations, and every change it makes is forever stamped in the DNA. While CRISPR opened the door to a new era in medicine, it is RNA editing that is helping scientists bring genetic engineering to its full potential. RNA editing is a natural process through which the sequence of the genome can be changed after transcription—a process whereby a segment of the DNA is copied to the RNA. “Our genome is composed of four building blocks—nucleotides—represented by the letters A, G, T, and C. When RNA editing takes place, it means that one of the building blocks making up the DNA sequence in a specific place in the cell, typically the A nucleotide, is replaced in the RNA—some of the time, in some of the tissue—with a G nucleotide. Scientists have found that a family of enzymes called ADARs (adenosine deaminases acting on RNA) is implicated in almost all of the RNA editing occurrences in the human cell, over 99% of which involves the A nucleotide being replaced with G,” says Prof. Levanon, whose research group was the first to develop a scanning technology that enables the detection of RNA editing as it occurs and expose its magnitude in the human genome. Unlike CRISPR, which is based on an engineered bacterial protein that breaks the DNA, RNA editing chemically modifies the RNA without damaging or breaking the DNA, and because it is based on natural human enzymes, is also less likely to trigger an immune response. Thanks to advantages such as these, once scientists perfect their ability to manipulate the body’s natural system to make controlled changes to the RNA—the DNA’s production instructions—they will be able to develop safe and highly effective treatments for numerous genetic diseases as well as nongenetic ones. Prof. Erez Levanon, head of the Genomic Research Lab at BIU’s Mina and Evrard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences, has returned to Israel after a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School, Boston. He uses bioinformatics—computer and data sciences, mathematics, and information processing—to study the plasticity of the genome and build RNA-editing tools that can pave the way for effective and safe therapeutics. This past year, Prof. Levanon joined BINA, pairing his expertise in computational biology with that of BINA’s team of optics, nano-delivery, chemistry and engineering scientists. Together they hope to leverage cuttingedge science to benefit human health. RNA Editing— Genetic Engineering, Next Generation 23
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