Cultured cell lines are used by cell biologists, clinicians, tissue engineers, and biotechnologists. The most important uses are in cell-based assays and production of biologically active proteins. In recent years, genome editing has been used to study structure, function, and localization of endogenous proteins in cultured cells. Applied to cell lines, genome editing also could improve their efficiency and help devise novel assays to find new bioactive molecules.
In this article from BioProcess International, Masahito Yamagata PhD, researcher at the Center for Brain Science in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University, uses a cadherin adhesion molecule to explain how to use genome editing to generate new cell lines to meet those needs.