Rachel F. Weissman

This paper develops yeast-selected SpCas9 variants with re-specified PAM recognition to enable allele-specific editing, demonstrating improved specificity and catalytic efficiency compared to PAM-broadened variants.

Ymu1 TnpB unwinds DNA via a long-lived partially unwound intermediate before a rarely stable open state; the WFR triple variant stabilizes both, boosting plant editing.

Tobacco rattle virus delivery of engineered ISDra2 variant eTnpBc and its guide RNA as a single transcript achieves up to 90% somatic and 100% heritable editing in Nicotiana benthamiana.

This study identifies activating mutations in TnpB enzymes that enhance genome editing activity across multiple species.