Repeat region engineering of Cas13a crRNA enables conformational gating-based autocatalytic CRISPR biosensing
Wei Ding, Xiaomin Yang, Yutong Yang, Mingxin Liu, Chenghui Liu, Jinyi Wang, Xiaoling Liu · 2026
Read Repeat region engineering of Cas13a crRNA enables conformational gating-based autocatalytic CRISPR biosensing by Wei Ding, Xiaomin Yang, Yutong Yang, Mingxin Liu, Chenghui Liu, Jinyi Wang, Xiaoling Liu (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13563088.txt.
Description
Wei Ding and six co-authors engineer the repeat region of Cas13a guide RNA to gate a CRISPR biosensor in a 2026 paper. Cas13a is an enzyme that cuts RNA when its guide finds a match, a trait used to detect viruses and other targets. The guide's repeat region was long treated as a fixed scaffold that could not be reshaped.
The team show the region bends more than thought: inserts and splits leave the enzyme's cutting power intact. That freedom lets plain nucleic acid blockers switch the sensor off and on with fine control. On that base they build a self-amplifying test, where one hit triggers more signal.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Wei Ding, Xiaomin Yang, Yutong Yang, Mingxin Liu, Chenghui Liu, Jinyi Wang, Xiaoling Liu |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 54 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |