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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2016 Dec 1.
Published in final edited form as: Curr Opin Chem Biol. 2015 Oct 24;29:72–78. doi: 10.1016/j.cbpa.2015.10.001

Figure 1. CRISPR/Cas9 specificity is dependent on its sgRNA.

Figure 1

The Cas9 protein (pink) complexes with a single guide RNA (sgRNA, red) at a DNA target site that contains a protospacer adjacent motif (PAM, blue box). The 5’ end of the sgRNA forms a 20-bp heteroduplex with one strand of the DNA. The binding or cleavage events facilitated by the Cas9/sgRNA complex can be categorized as highly specific (no off-targets), intermediate (1 to 5 off-targets) and promiscuous (6 or more off-targets).