An Introduction to Base Editing and Prime Editing: Principles and their Importance

The present study introduce readers to the concepts and principles of “Base editing” and “Prime editing” – two very important methodologies that nearly revolutionized the field of Genome Editing over the past few years. Prime editing shows higher or similar efficiency and fewer byproducts than homology-directed repair, has complementary strengths and weaknesses compared to base editing, and induces much lower off-target editing than Cas9 nuclease at known Cas9 off-target sites. Prime editing substantially expands the scope and capabilities of genome editing, and in principle could correct up to 89% of known genetic variants associated with human diseases.