Delivery Methods for CRISPR/Cas Reagents

The emergence of the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR associated protein (CRISPR/Cas) and its reengineering into a potent genome editing system has revolutionized life sciences. It has brought much excitement and hope in medical and agricultural research for unprecedented control over the redesigning of genomes. Based on CRISPR, many genome engineering tools have been developed and extensively used for the identification of new genes and therapeutic targets, functional genomics, gene therapies, and the development of transgenic animals and plants. The successful applications of CRISPR/Cas depend on the safe and efficient transportation of CRISPR/Cas reagents into the cell nucleus. In this chapter we discuss the merits and demerits of different cargo reagents used for genome editing through CRISPR/Cas. In addition, we detail several delivery methods reported for CRISPR/Cas, including physical, viral, and non-viral delivery methods. We also highlight different emerging delivery methods not currently reported for delivery of CRISPR/Cas reagents. Finally, we discuss available delivering methods of CRISPR/Cas components for plant genome editing.