CRISPR/Cas9 Essential Gene Editing in Drosophila.

Since the addition of the CRISPR/Cas9 technology to the genetic engineering toolbox, the problems of low efficiency and off-target effects hamper its widespread use in all fields of life sciences. Furthermore, essential gene knockout usually results in failure and it is often not obvious whether the gene of interest is an essential one. Here, we report on a new strategy to improve the CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing, which is based on the idea that editing efficiency is tightly linked to how essential the gene to be modified is.