Fabrication and characterization of PLGA nanoparticles encapsulating large CRISPR-Cas9 plasmid.

Background: The clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and Cas9 protein system is a revolutionary tool for gene therapy. Despite promising reports of the utility of CRISPR-Cas9 for in vivo gene editing, a principal problem in implementing this new process is delivery of high molecular weight DNA into cells.

Results: Using poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA), a nanoparticle carrier was designed to deliver a model CRISPR-Cas9 plasmid into primary bone marrow derived macrophages.

Maternal Influence and Murine Housing Confound Impact of NLRP1 Inflammasome on Microbiome Composition.

The NLRP1 inflammasome attenuates inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) progression and colitis-associated tumorigenesis. A possible mechanism postulates that the lack of the NLRP1 inflammasome creates permissive niches in the gut for pathogenic bacteria to flourish, causing dysbiosis and increased IBD susceptibility. To evaluate this hypothesis, we characterized the gut microbiome of wild-type, Nlrp1b-/-, and Asc-/- mice under naïve conditions by sequencing the V3 region of the 16s rRNA gene.