CRISPR is widely used to target specific cell types, but only one at a time. Researchers have now developed methods to edit genes in multiple organisms within a diverse community of microbes simultaneously, a first step toward editing microbiomes such as those in the gut or on plants. One method assesses which microbes are editable; a second adds genes with a barcode that allows scientists to insert, track and assess insertion efficiency and specificity.
Now, the University of California, Berkeley, group that invented the CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing technology nearly 10 years ago has found a way to add or modify genes within a community of many different species simultaneously, opening the door to what could be called «community editing.»
While this technology is still exclusively applied in lab settings, it could be used both to edit and to track edited microbes within a natural community, such as in the gut or on the roots of a plant where hundreds or thousands of different microbes congregate. Such tracking becomes necessary as scientists talk about genetically altering microbial populations: inserting genes into microbes in the gut to fix digestive problems, for example, or altering the microbial environment of crops to make them more resilient to pests.
Without a way to track the gene insertions — using a barcode, in this case — such inserted genes could end up anywhere, since microbes routinely share genes among themselves.
«Breaking and changing DNA within isolated microorganisms has been essential to understanding what that DNA does,» said UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow Benjamin Rubin. «This work helps bring that fundamental approach to microbial communities, which are much more representative of how these microbes live and function in nature.»
While the ability to «shotgun» edit many types of cells or microbes at once could be useful in current industry-scale systems — bioreactors for culturing cells in bulk, for example, the more immediate application may be as a tool in understanding the structure of complex communities of bacteria, archaea and fungi, and gene flow within these diverse populations.
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Materials provided by University of California — Berkeley. Original written by Robert Sanders. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.