Congratulations to CRISPR ML team for being the winner of the first week of February 2019 for developing two predictive modelling approaches, Azimuth and Elevation, to tackle problems of on-target and off-target activity prediction. Congratulations!

Azimuth and Elevation: On-target and off-target guide prediction
The CRISPR/Cas9 system provides state-of-the art genome editing capabilities. However, several facets of this system are under investigation for further characterization and optimization. One in particular is the choice of guide RNA that directs Cas9 to target DNA: given that one would like to target the protein-coding region of a gene, hundreds of guides satisfy the constraints of the CRISPR/Cas9 PAM sequence. Only some of these guides efficiently target DNA to generate gene knockouts. Also, some guides may accidentally have activity in unintended places. We have developed two predictive modelling approaches, Azimuth [1] and Elevation [2], for these respective problems of on-target and off-target activity prediction.