HYMS Centre for Education Development (CED), Hull York Medical School, University of York, York, UK Molecular Haematology Unit, MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, UK Department of Haematology, Oxford University NHS Foundation Trust, Churchill Hospital, Oxford, UK Academic Unit of Child Health, Sheffield Children’s Hospital, She...

Cover image provided courtesy of Horizon Discovery. This image has been digitally altered from the original version for publication purposes.

Genes whose function is selectively essential in the presence of cancer-associated genetic aberrations represent promising targets for the development of precision therapeutics. Here, we present CancerGD, a resource that integrates genotypic profiling with large-scale loss-of-function genetic screens in tumor cell lines to identify such genetic dependencies. CancerGD provides tools for searchin...

We fit a Markov chain model of microsatellite evolution introduced by Kruglyak et al. to data on all di-, tri-, and tetranucleotide repeats in the yeast genome. Our results suggest that many features of the distribution of abundance and length of microsatellites can be explained by this simple model, which incorporates a competition between slippage events and base pair substitutions, with no n...

I admit to having a soft spot for the bacterial phenomenon of host-specific modification and restriction. I vividly remember first learning about this mechanism to stave off marauding DNA as a beginning graduate student in the mid1970s. Preceding the discovery of its modern-day defensive counterpart, CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) by about 50 years, restricti...

The metaphor of “gene editing” has been employed widely in popular discussions of CRISPR technology. The editing metaphor obscures the physical mechanism of action in CRISPR techniques, and understates the present frequency of offtarget effects. However, the editing metaphor may be a useful means to think about approaches to regulating the future use of CRISPR. Conceiving of CRISPR as an inform...

In this review we briefly describe the development of CRISPR tools for genome editing and control of transcription in bacteria. We focus on the Type II CRISPR/Cas9 system, provide specific examples for use of the system, and highlight the advantages and disadvantages of CRISPR versus other techniques. We suggest potential strategies for combining CRISPR tools with high-throughput approaches to ...