Engineered Avian Retrotransposons Achieve 60% Targeted Gene Integration in Human Cells
Researchers at the Beijing Institute of Genomics identified 159 new avian R2 retrotransposons by scanning 1,139 bird genomes. By engineering these elements, they created an all-RNA system that achieves up to 60% site-specific gene integration in human primary cells, offering a new tool for precise genome editing without double-strand DNA breaks.