Virginijus Siksnys

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that the Cas9–crRNA complex of the Streptococcus thermophilus CRISPR3/Cas system introduces in vitro a double-strand break at a specific site in DNA containing a sequence complementary to crRNA, paving the way for engineering of universal programmable RNA-guided DNA endonucleases.

TL;DR: An updated evolutionary classification of CRISPR–Cas systems and cas genes is provided, with an emphasis on the major developments that have occurred since the publication of the latest classification, in 2015, which includes 2 classes, 6 types and 33 subtypes.

TL;DR: The results show that active CRISPR/Cas systems can be transferred across distant genera and provide heterologous interference against invasive nucleic acids and can be leveraged to develop strains more robust against phage attack, and safer organisms less likely to uptake and disseminate plasmid-encoded undesirable genetic elements.

TL;DR: Single-molecule DNA supercoiling is used to directly observe and quantify the dynamics of torque-dependent R-loop formation and dissociation for both Cascade- and Cas9-based CRISPR-Cas systems and finds that Cascade has higher torque stability than Cas9 by using a conformational locking step.

TL;DR: It is proposed that the Cas3 ATPase/helicase domain acts as a motor protein, which assists delivery of the nuclease activity to Cascade–crRNA complex targeting foreign DNA.