CRISPR Cas System: An efficient tool for cancer modelling.

The Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats-Cas-9 (CRISPR-Cas9) system has been a revolutionising tool in the field of molecular genetics, which provides a versatile range of editing potentials. Researchers can produce breaks or alter genomes with ease using the system. Cancer is one of the multi-gene diseases whose genes need to be studied in detail. The CRISPR-Cas9 technology may also provide a promising potential in the field of cancer genetics. The current narrative review comprised 50 research articles which were keenly analysed and the applications and outcomes of CRISPR-Cas9 system in cancer genetics were comprehensively and critically discussed. It was concluded that application of the system had great potential to help understand cancer biology of various types and could be used for its genetic modelling. However, much work is still needed to be done to apply the technology for understanding the mechanism of cancers and to help in the designing of appropriate therapies.

An in silico approach to characterize nonsynonymous SNPs and regulatory SNPs in human TOX3 gene.

Cancer is one of the deadliest complex diseases having multigene nature where the role of single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) has been well explored in multiple genes. TOX high mobility group box family member 3 (TOX3) is one such gene, in which SNPs have been found to be associated with breast cancer. In this study, we have examined the potentially damaging nonsynonymous SNPs(nsSNPs) in TOX3 gene using in silico tools, namely PolyPhen2, SNP&GO, PhD-SNP and PROVEAN, which were further confirmed by I-Mutant, MutPred1.2 and ConSurf for their stability, functional and structural effects. nsSNPs rs368713418 (A266D), rs751141352 (P273S, P273T), rs200878352 (A275T) have been found to be the most deleterious that may have a vital role in breast cancer. Premature stop codon producing SNPs (Q527STOP), rs1259790811 (G495STOP), rs1294465822 (S395STOP) and rs1335372738 (G8STOP) were also found having prime importance in truncated and malfunctional protein formation. We also characterized regulatory SNPs for its potential effect on TOX3 gene regulation and found nine SNPs that may affect the gene regulation. Further, we have also designed 3D models using I-TASSER for the wild type and four mutant TOX3 proteins. Our study concludes that these SNPs can be of prime importance while studying breast cancer and other associated diseases as well. They are required to be studied in model organisms and cell cultures, and may have potential importance in personalized medicines and gene therapy.

Identification of most damaging nsSNPs in human CCR6 gene: In silico analyses.

Single nucleotide polymorphisms in CCR6 (C-C chemokine receptor type 6) gene have been found to be the possible cause of many diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, lupus nephritis and systemic sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases. Therefore, identification of structurally and functionally important polymorphisms in CCR6 is important in order to study its potential malfunctioning and discovering therapeutic targets. Several bioinformatics tools were used to identify most damaging nsSNPs that might be vital for CCR6 structure and function. The in silico tools included PROVEAN, SIFT, SNP&GO and PolyPhen2 followed by I-Mutant MutPred and ConSurf. Phyre2 and I-TASSER were used for protein 3-D Modelling while gene-gene interaction was predicted by STRING and GeneMANIA. Our study suggested that three nsSNPs rs1376162684, rs751102128 and rs1185426631 are the most damaging in CCR6 gene while 7 missense SNPs rs1438637216, rs139697820, rs768420505, rs1282264186, rs1394647982, rs769360638 and rs1263402382 are found to revert into stop codons. Prediction of post-transcriptional modifications highlighted the significance of rs1376162684 because it effected potential phosphorylation site. Gene-gene interactions showed relation of CCR6 with other genes depicting its importance in several pathways and co-expressions. In future, studying diseases related to CCR6 should include investigation of these 10 nsSNPs. Being the first of its type, this study also proposes future perspectives that will help in precision medicines. For such purposes, CCR6 proteins from patients of autoimmune diseases should be explored. Animal models can also be of significance find out the effects of CCR6 in diseases.