Science Spotlight: Epigenetic editor for brain prion silencing, Mopac’s oral biologics and more

Researchers reported in Science a zinc finger-based epigenome editor with advantages over a CRISPR-based version of the system, and showed it could durably suppress brain expression of a protein that causes toxic aggregation.

The team, co-led by Sonia Vallabh and Jonathan Weissman, made a fusion of the non-enzymatic C-terminal domain of the epigenetic regulator DNMT3L and a histone H3 tail. Together, they recruit the endogenous methyltransferase DNMT3A to silence a target gene, specified by an attached zinc-finger protein (ZFP), by methylating its promoter...