Advances in genome editing technology and its promising application in evolutionary and ecological studies

GigaScience

Table 1 Comparisons between different genome editing technologies

	Site-specific recombinase technology	ZFN	TALEN	CRISPR/Cas9
Efficiency	0.03%-0.3%	0 ~ 12%	0 ~ 76%	0 ~ 81%
Off-target effect	Less observed off	More potential off-target effects than TALENs	Less observed off-target effects	More potential off-target effects than TALENs and ZFNs
Applicable organism	Only in metazoan	metazoan、plants	metazoan、plants	metazoan、plants
Possible target sites	Needs specific sites(loxP, FLP et al.)	500 bp	36 bp	8 bp
Methylation sensitive	Not sure	Sensitive	Sensitive	Not sensitive
Multiplexable	No	Rarely used	Rarely used	Yes
Programmable	Limited	Moderate	Moderate/high	Moderate/high

Note: We compare the advantages between site-specific recombinase technology, ZFN, TALEN and CRISPR/Cas9 in several aspects. ZFN, TALEN and CRISPR/Cas9 have much higher efficiencies and effects in various organisms.
ZFN, Zinc Finger Nuclease; TALEN, Transcription Activator-Like Effector Nuclease; CRISPR, Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats.

ISSN: 2047-217X