Broad Institute

About: Broad Institute is a nonprofit organization based out in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Genome-wide association study. The organization has 6584 authors who have published 11618 publications receiving 1522743 citations. The organization is also known as: Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Analysis of protein-coding genetic variation in 60,706 humans

Abstract: Large-scale reference data sets of human genetic variation are critical for the medical and functional interpretation of DNA sequence changes. Here we describe the aggregation and analysis of high-quality exome (protein-coding region) sequence data for 60,706 individuals of diverse ethnicities. The resulting catalogue of human genetic diversity has unprecedented resolution, with an average of one variant every eight bases of coding sequence and the presence of widespread mutational recurrence. The deep catalogue of variation provided by the Exome Aggregation Consortium (ExAC) can be used to calculate objective metrics of pathogenicity for sequence variants, and to identify genes subject to strong selection against various classes of mutation; we identify 3,230 genes with near-complete depletion of truncating variants, 79% of which have no currently established human disease phenotype. Finally, we show that these data can be used for the efficient filtering of candidate disease-causing variants, and for the discovery of human knockout variants in protein-coding genes.

C2c2 is a single-component programmable RNA-guided RNA-targeting CRISPR effector

Abstract: The clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)-CRISPR-associated genes (Cas) adaptive immune system defends microbes against foreign genetic elements via DNA or RNA-DNA interference. We characterize the class 2 type VI CRISPR-Cas effector C2c2 and demonstrate its RNA-guided ribonuclease function. C2c2 from the bacterium Leptotrichia shahii provides interference against RNA phage. In vitro biochemical analysis shows that C2c2 is guided by a single CRISPR RNA and can be programmed to cleave single-stranded RNA targets carrying complementary protospacers. In bacteria, C2c2 can be programmed to knock down specific mRNAs. Cleavage is mediated by catalytic residues in the two conserved Higher Eukaryotes and Prokaryotes Nucleotide-binding (HEPN) domains, mutations of which generate catalytically inactive RNA-binding proteins. These results broaden our understanding of CRISPR-Cas systems and suggest that C2c2 can be used to develop new RNA-targeting tools.