CRISPR/Cas Systems towards Next-Generation Biosensing

• Published in: Trends in biotechnology (Regular ed.) Vol. 37; no. 7; pp. 730 - 743
• Main Authors: Li, Yi, Li, Shiyuan, Wang, Jin, Liu, Guozhen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 01-07-2019; Elsevier Limited
• Subjects: biosensing; Biosensors; Cas12; Cas13; Cas9; Cleavage; CRISPR; CRISPR/Cas; Deoxyribonucleic acid; Diagnostic systems; diagnostics; DNA; DNA methylation; Genome editing; Genomes; Laboratories; Mutation; nucleic acid detection; Nucleic acids; Proteins; Ribonucleic acid; RNA; Single-stranded DNA; Target detection; Zika virus; nucleic acid detection; diagnostics; biosensing; Cas13; Cas9; Cas12; CRISPR/Cas
• ISSN: 0167-7799; 1879-3096
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tibtech.2018.12.005

Beyond its remarkable genome editing ability, the CRISPR/Cas9 effector has also been utilized in biosensing applications. The recent discovery of the collateral RNA cleavage activity of the Cas13a effector has sparked even greater interest in developing novel biosensing technologies for nucleic acid detection and promised significant advances in CRISPR diagnostics. Now, along with the discovery of Cas12 collateral cleavage activities on single-stranded DNA (ssDNA), several CRISPR/Cas systems have been established for detecting various targets, including bacteria, viruses, cancer mutations, and others. Based on key Cas effectors, we provide a detailed classification of CRISPR/Cas biosensing systems and propose their future utility. As the field continues to mature, CRISPR/Cas systems have the potential to become promising candidates for next-generation diagnostic biosensing platforms.
CRISPR/Cas biosensing systems transfer the sequence information of target nucleic acids to detectable signals such as fluorescence and colorimetric values.
CRISPR/Cas biosensing systems are versatile platforms for nucleic acid detection that can be used for pathogen detection and genotyping, cancer mutation detection, and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) identification.
The biosensing methods employing these Cas effectors rely on the collateral cleavage activities of Cas13 and Cas12.
CRISPR/Cas biosensing allows highly sensitive, specific, rapid, cost-efficient, and multiplex detection of target nucleic acids, and support point-of-care use without the need for technical expertise and complicated equipment.