CRISPR guides induce gene silencing in plants in the absence of Cas.
Veerendra Kumar SharmaSandeep MarlaWenguang ZhengDivya MishraJun HuangWei ZhangGeoffrey Preston MorrisDavid Edward CookPublished in: Genome biology (2022)
Collectively, our results suggest that GIGS utilizes endogenous RNAi machinery despite the fact that crRNA are unlike canonical triggers of RNAi such as miRNA, hairpins, or long double-stranded RNA. Given similar evidence of Cas13-independent silencing in an insect system, it is likely GIGS is active across many eukaryotes. Our results show that GIGS offers a novel and flexible approach to RNA reduction with potential benefits over existing technologies for crop improvement and functional genomics.