A synthetic lethal pair; plus Arbor and more

A group led by Antony Carr and Cong Liu at University of Sussex and Sichuan University identified a new synthetic lethal pair: ENDOD1 and p53. Reported in Nature Communications, ENDOD1 depletion in p53-mutated tumor cells, or p53 depletion in ENDOD1 null cells, resulted in single-stranded DNA accumulation and cell death. Based on the high frequency of p53 mutation in cancers, which the authors pegged at about 50%, they argued that “ENDOD1 has potential as a wide-spectrum target for synthetic lethal treatments.”

Arbor Biotechnologies Inc. engineered a Cas12i nuclease, dubbed ABR-001, to enhance its DNA editing efficiency and specificity in human cell lines. In the CRISPR-Cas9 system, a trans-activating RNA (tracrRNA) base pairs with a CRISPR RNA (crRNA) to form a functional guide RNA (gRNA). ABR-001 can process precursor crRNA, does not require tracrRNA for target DNA cleavage, and is small enough to fit into an adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector. The article is in Nature Communications...