A sweeping form of search-and-replace editing has come for mRNA

For sev­er­al years now, biotechs have en­thused over DNA-al­ter­ing tech­nolo­gies that al­low the edit­ing of any ge­net­ic se­quence by swap­ping out de­fec­tive or un­want­ed code for a new one. Now, a hand­ful of star­tups and aca­d­e­m­ic groups are work­ing on a sim­i­lar ap­proach for short-lived mR­NA mol­e­cules.

The goal is to com­bine the ben­e­fits of large-block ed­its with the more ver­sa­tile, less per­ma­nent and po­ten­tial­ly safer tar­get of mR­NA. While the new tech­nolo­gies go by many names, sci­en­tists fa­mil­iar with the work told End­points News that the tech­niques were in­spired by the con­cep­tu­al­ly anal­o­gous prime edit­ing. Some call it RNA writ­ing.

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