sgRNA and gRNA - Important Differences

gRNA stands for Guide RNA while Single guide RNA (sgRNA) is made use to describe the gRNA. As the name suggests, sgRNA is the single RNA molecule, containing a custom-designed short crRNA sequence (both) united to the scaffold tracrRNA sequence. It is possible to synthetically generate sgRNA or can be made in vivo, or in vitro from the template of DNA.

Typically, gRNA is used to explain all the CRISPR guide formats of RNA while the sgRNA corresponds to the uncomplicated option, which takes into consideration both the tracrRNA and crRNA components into one molecule of RNA.

As such, both the terms gRNA and sgRNA are interchangeably used to explain the same molecule, hence there are no such dissimilarities between gRNA and sgRNA.

sgRNA (single guide RNA)

  • It has a 20-nucleotide long sequence that complements its target
  • One of the actual methods to make sgRNA includes expressing the gRNA sequence in cells from transfected plasmid
  • Here, the sgRNA sequence is cloned into plasmid vectors, then it is inserted into cells
  • Here the cells use their normal RNA polymerase enzyme for the transcription of genetic content into DNA that is newly introduced to generate the sgRNA

gRNA (Guide RNA)

  • gRNA are synthetic short molecules of RNA that are used in the CRISPR system-based genome editing, one of the extremely specific kinds of genome modification tool
  • It comprises approximately a 20 bp long nucleotide sequence, which links to a target sequence of DNA of the genome which is referred to as spacer sequence
  • gRNA molecule is made of a scaffold sequence to bind the endonuclease, Cas
  • Hence, two components of the CRISPR based genome editing are the gRNA and the CRISPR associated endonuclease (Cas)

sgRNA is another phrase for gRNA. gRNA is synthetic and short RNA sequences utilised in specifying target sequence in the genome for endonuclease in the CRISPR system.

Both these form the elements of CRISPR-based genome editing. Hence, it is just the difference in the terms, and no difference as such.

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