Speeding up gene discovery
Since the completion of the Human Genome Project, which identified nearly 20,000 protein-coding genes, scientists have been trying to decipher the roles of those genes. A new approach developed at MIT, the Broad Institute, and the Whitehead Institute should speed up the process by allowing researchers to study the entire genome at once.The new system, known as CRISPR, allows researchers to permanently and selectively delete genes from a cell’s DNA. In two new papers, the researchers showed that they could study all the genes in the genome by deleting a different gene in each of a huge population of cells, then observing which cells proliferated under different conditions. “With this work, it is now possible to conduct systematic genetic screens in mammalian cells. This will greatly aid efforts to understand the function of both protein-coding genes as well as noncoding genetic elements,” says David Sabatini, a member of the Whitehead...