Chinese Scientists Say They’ve Found a Safer Alternative to CRISPR

Researchers from China’s Peking University have developed a new gene-editing technology —  and they think it shows promise as a CRISPR alternative for fighting human diseases.

According to a paper published on Monday in the journal Nature Biotechnology, this new technology, LEAPER, which stands for “leveraging endogenous ADAR for programmable editing of RNA,” works similarly to CRISPR-Cas13, targeting RNA molecules as opposed to DNA like the well-known CRISPR-Cas9.

But while CRISPR-Cas13 relies on both a guide RNA and the Cas13 enzyme to make its edits to RNA, the LEAPER system needs just one component known as an arRNA.

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