Patent Pending
Understanding the function of RNAs requires visualizing their location and dynamics in live cells. However, direct labeling and imaging individual endogenous RNAs in living cells is still needed.
UC Berkeley researchers have developed a method to directly resolve individual endogenous RNA transcripts in living cells using programmable RNA-guided and RNA-targeting CRISPR-Csm complexes coupled with a variety of crRNAs that collectively span along the transcripts of interest. The researchers demonstrated robust labeling of MAP1B and NOTCH2 mRNAs in several cell lines. We tracked NOTCH2 and MAP1B transcript transient dynamics in living cells, captured distinct mobilities of individual transcripts in different subcellular compartments, and detected translation dependent and independent RNA motions.