CRISPR activation
CRISPR activation (CRISPRa) is a gene regulation technique that utilizes an engineered form of the CRISPR-Cas9 system to enhance the expression of specific genes without altering the underlying DNA sequence. Unlike traditional CRISPR-Cas9, which introduces double-strand breaks to edit genes, CRISPRa employs a modified, catalytically inactive Cas9 (dCas9) fused with transcriptional activators to target promoter or enhancer regions, thereby boosting gene transcription.