🧬 Roughly half your DNA used to live somewhere else in your DNA.

A jumping gene needs one molecule to cut itself free — but the switch that makes it only flips after the escape. A chicken-and-egg paradox since 2024.

UTokyo's answer: the switch leaks.

#BridgeRNA #Genomics

Caixia Gao's team co-engineered the ultra-compact ISCro4 bridge recombinase and bRNA to achieve a 30-fold efficiency boost, single-AAV delivery, and seamless 315 kb promoter-swapping inversions in rice. 🌾🤖 #PlantGenomics #BridgeRNA #TrendsInBiotech2026 #CaixiaGao #GeneEditing #AgBiotech

Patrick Hsu and Hiroshi Nishimasu uncovered the directional switch of IS110 bridge RNA, proving that modifying two dinucleotides flips recombination directionality and boosts excision by 13,000-fold in Nature. 🧬🤖
#BridgeRNA #CRISPR #Nature2026 #PatrickHsu #Nishimasu #GeneEditing #SyntheticBiology

Yes! Exactly! This is a recurring theme in some RNA-guided DNA-targeting systems. BridgeRNA recombinases and group II introns also follow similar principles where the guide has discontiguous loops that collectively define a target site! Thereby preventing self targeting!

Are you ever confused by the different gene editing tools out there? The gene editing toolbox has rapidly expanded in the last few years, and base editing, prime editing, and now bridgeRNA have become common words in a scientist's vocabulary.

Here is a handy reminder !
#crispr #crisprmed #cas9

However, canonical recombinases can't be "programmed" the way a CRISPR system can. But Bridge Recombinases, recently characterized by the Hsu, Ataide, and Hall labs, use a guide called a bridgeRNA to program what DNA moves and where it moves to.