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Volume 28, No 12, Dec 2018

ISSN: 1001-0602 
EISSN: 1748-7838 2018 
impact factor 17.848* 
(Clarivate Analytics, 2019)

Volume 28 Issue 12, December 2018: 1198-1201

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Structural insights into Cas13b-guided CRISPR RNA maturation and recognition

Bo Zhang 1,2, Weiwei Ye 1, Yangmiao Ye 1, Huan Zhou 3, Abdullah F. U. H. Saeed 1, Jing Chen 1, Jinying Lin 1, Vanja Perčulija 1, Qi Chen 1, Chun-Jung Chen 4, Ming-Xian Chang 5, Muhammad Iqbal Choudhary 6 and Songying Ouyang 1,2,7

1The Key Laboratory of Innate Immune Biology of Fujian Province,Biomedical Research Center of South China, College of Life Sciences,Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou 350117, China; 2Provincial University Key Laboratory of Cellular Stress Response and Metabolic Regulation, College of Life Sciences, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou 350117, China; 3Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201204, China; 4 Institute of Biotechnology, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, 701 Taiwan, China; 5State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430072, China; 6 H.E.J. Research Institute of Chemistry, International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences, University of Karachi, Karachi 75270, Pakistan and 7National Laboratory of Biomacromolecules, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
 Correspondence: These authors contributed equally: Bo Zhang, Weiwei YeCorrespondence: Songying Ouyang (ouyangsy@fjnu.edu.cn)

Dear Editor,

CRISPR-Cas (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats and CRISPR-associated proteins) systems are RNA-guided adaptive immune systems in prokaryotes.1,2 Class 2 CRISPR-Cas systems (including type II, V, and VI) involve large single effector proteins in complex with crRNA for interference.3,4 The type II and V effectors, such as Cas9 and Cas12a, have been engineered into powerful tools for genome editing. The type VI system encompasses RNA-guided RNases. Its effectors Cas13a, Cas13b and Cas13d are capable of both precursor CRISPR RNA (pre-crRNA) processing and target RNA cleavage, which protect the host from phage attacks.5,6,7 Once bound to a target RNA, they are activated, switching on a non-specific RNase activity. Moreover, they have been utilized to target and edit RNA as programmable RNA-binding modules.6,8,9,10,11,12 Although related to Cas13a and Cas13d, Cas13b possesses many distinctive features. These include the lack of significant sequence similarity with Cas13a and Cas13d, disparate crRNA repeat region, double-sided protospacer flanking sequence (PFS)-dependent target RNA cleavage.5,6,7,8,1


https://doi.org/10.1038/s41422-018-0109-4

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