“In a leap forward for genetic engineering, a team of researchers from the Arc Institute has discovered the bridge recombinase mechanism, a precise and powerful tool to recombine and rearrange DNA in a programmable way.

The study published today in Nature reports their discovery of the first DNA recombinase that uses a non-coding RNA for sequence-specific selection of target and donor DNA molecules. This bridge RNA is programmable, allowing the user to specify any desired genomic target sequence and any donor DNA molecule to be inserted.

‘The bridge RNA system is a fundamentally new mechanism for biological programming,’ said Dr. Patrick Hsu, senior author of the study and an Arc Institute Core Investigator and University of California, Berkeley Assistant Professor of Bioengineering. ‘Bridge recombination can universally modify genetic material through sequence-specific insertion, excision, inversion, and more, enabling a word processor for the living genome beyond CRISPR.'”

From Arc Institute.