CRISPR‐Cas12a System for Biosensing and Gene Regulation

Abstract Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) is a promising technology in the biological world. As one of the CRISPR‐associated (Cas) proteins, Cas12a is an RNA‐guided nuclease in the type V CRISPR‐Cas system, which has been a robust tool for gene editing. In addition, due to the discovery of target‐binding‐induced indiscriminate single‐stranded DNase activity of Cas12a, CRISPR‐Cas12a also exhibits great promise in biosensing. This minireview not only gives a brief introduction to the mechanism of CRISPR‐Cas12a but also highlights the recent developments and applications in biosensing and gene regulation. Finally, future prospects of the CRISPR‐Cas12a system are also discussed. We expect this minireview will inspire innovative work on the CRISPR‐Cas12a system by making full use of its features and advantages.