Nature Communications (Nov 2016)

Structural roles of guide RNAs in the nuclease activity of Cas9 endonuclease

  • Youngbin Lim,
  • So Young Bak,
  • Keewon Sung,
  • Euihwan Jeong,
  • Seung Hwan Lee,
  • Jin-Soo Kim,
  • Sangsu Bae,
  • Seong Keun Kim

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms13350
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. 1
pp. 1 – 8

Abstract

Read online

In bacteria, CRISPR-Cas9 identifies and cleaves the target DNA with the assistance of a tracrRNA and a crRNA. Here the authors use single-molecule spectroscopy to investigate conformational changes and show that the tracrRNA keeps Cas9 in a functionally active form.