MAGESTIC was developed by researchers at the Joint Institute of Metrology and Biology (JIMB) a collaboration between Stanford University and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and researchers from EMBL, Texas A&M University and Brandeis University.
MAGESTIC is a development on the CRISPR–Cas9 system with claims of increased cell survivability, accuracy of edits and reduction of genome corruption.
In a process called 'active donor recruitment', MAGESTIC uses array-synthesized guide–donor oligos to pass donor DNA over to the cut site rather than having the cells repair system handle the process. Normally when donor DNA is supplied, the cell machinery still needs to search through millions to billions of base pairs of sequence to find the right donor sequence. With MAGESTIC the LexA–Fkh1p fusion protein recruits donor DNA to the site of breaks. By directly handling the deployment of donor DNA rather than the cells repair system handling it, less stress is put onto the cell, making the cell 7x more likely to survive the process.
Rather than using 'plasmid barcodes' to track changes that are made to the cell, MAGESTIC uses cellular barcodes by integrating the tag into the chromosome. This is claimed to be more stable and accurate than the plasmid method, reducing errors introduced into the genome by gene editing.
