Skoltech researchers Regina Tkach, Natalia Nikitchina, Nikita Shebanov, Konstantin Severinov and Ilya Mazunin have co-authored a preprint “Efficient target cleavage by Type V Cas12a effector programmed with split CRISPR RNA” that has been recently published at bioRxiv. The scientists have shown that Cas12a, an effector protein of type V CRISPR/Cas systems, works perfectly when crRNAs is split into two individual moieties (scaffold and spacer RNAs). The ability of the Cas12a nuclease to be programmed with split crRNAs will further facilitate genome editing techniques based on Cas12a nucleases. Full text of the preprint is available here.