Promise of cheap and fast CRISPR-based diagnostics
/Handheld CRISPR device to enable faster diagnosis of genetic disease
A team of researchers in the US has developed a handheld device that diagnoses genetic diseases at point-of-care. Called CRISPR-Chip, the device combines a deactivated clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) Cas9 protein with electronic transistors to identify genetic mutations in DNA samples without the need for amplification or replication of the DNA segment using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR).
Avoiding the time-consuming PCR step is expected to enable the use of CRISPR-Chip for genetic testing in a doctor’s office or field work setting, rather than sending samples to a laboratory.
The method can also be used to assess the accuracy of gene-editing techniques.
The researchers included scientists from the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) and the Keck Graduate Institute (KGI) of The Claremont Colleges.
