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Gene editing

Guide DNA — not RNA — expands the CRISPR toolkit

Nature Biotechnology (2026) Cite this article

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Cas12 nucleases can use guide DNA instead of guide RNA, which switches their targets from DNA to RNA.

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Fig. 1: DNA-guided RNA targeting with Cas12a.
The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Botnar Institute of Immune Engineering, Basel, Switzerland

    Chase L. Beisel

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  1. Chase L. Beisel
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Correspondence to Chase L. Beisel.

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Competing interests

C.L.B. is an inventor on multiple pending and granted patents on CRISPR technologies, a co-founder and advisor to Locus Biosciences, and a co-founder and an officer of Leopard Biosciences.

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Beisel, C.L. Guide DNA — not RNA — expands the CRISPR toolkit. Nat Biotechnol (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-026-03138-9

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