Molecular scissors help evolutionary investigation
Friday, June 24, 2016 - 09:21
in Biology & Nature
Scientists at KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) detected an important mechanism in the evolution of plant genomes: Using Arabidopsis thaliana as a model organism, they studied the formation of tandem repeat DNA sequences and found out that these sequences form if both DNA strands are broken at a significant distance from each other. For their experiments, the scientists used CRISPR/Cas system, working like a "pair of molecular scissors." The results are presented in the PNAS journal. (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1603823113)