Overview:

Cas13a is an RNA-guided RNA endonuclease that belongs to the class 2 type VI CRISPR-Cas system (1). Cas13a possesses both RNA recognition and cleavage activities and cleaves RNA through conserved basic residues within its two HEPN domains (2). Activated Cas13a also induces collateral cleavage of nearby non-targeted RNAs in a nonspecific manner (3). This property of the Cas13a enzyme has been leveraged for the development of sensitive and robust nucleic acid detection tools with applications in both basic research and therapeutics development (4).

Components:

References:

1. East-Seletsky A, et al. 2016. Two distinct RNase activities of CRISPR-C2c2 enable guide-RNA processing and RNA detection. Nature. 538:270–3.

2. Abudayyeh O, et al. 2016. C2c2 is a single-component programmable RNA-guided RNA-targeting CRISPR effector. Science. 353:5573.

3. Zhang J, You Y. 2020. CRISPR-Cas13a system: A novel approach to precision oncology. Cancer Biol Med. 17(1):6-8.

4. Patchsung M, et al. 2020. Clinical validation of a Cas13-based assay for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA. Nat Biomed Eng. 4(12):1140-1149.