Technologies for Proteome-Wide Discovery of Extracellular Host-Pathogen Interactions

Martinez-Martin, Nadia

Technology. The increasingly popular CRISPR/Cas9 technology overcomes some of the caveats often associated with genetic manipulation and holds enormous promise for genome editing and downstream applications, including host-pathogen interaction discovery [123] . Although still early days, high throughput CRISPR/Cas9 screens for genome-wide studies have already displayed remarkable results, with high levels of genomic modification, hit confirmation, and strong phenotypic effects [124] . The development of the CRISPR/Cas9 technology has undoubtedly transformed the functional genetic analysis in mammals. Recent studies have applied the CRISPR/Cas9 technology to ablate expression of previously identified receptors for viral entry, such as the HIV coreceptors CXCR4 and CCR5, leading to resistance to infection in primary cells [125, 126] . An interesting additional application of CRISPR/Cas9 is the direct editing of viral genes important for viral fitness. This approach has recently been used to target HSV-1, CMV, and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) essential genes, leading to a significant decrease of viral replication [127] . These studies suggest the potential use of CRISPR/Cas9 as an innovative therapeutic strategy, as aspect that will surely be further explored in the near future.