Unrivaled Dominance of TP53 in CRISPR Studies Across Mammalian Cells

Overview

TP53 is the most frequently knocked-out gene in mammalian cells since the invention of CRISPR technology in 2012; Looking at 3782 CRISPR-related articles indexed in Pubmed central since 2012 shows TP53, with 66 times knock-out in different studies, is the most studied gene among 2479 individually knocked-out genes in mammalian cells. Furthermore, we found this gene has been knocked out in 41 host cell lines, indicating, in total, 25 times duplicate work by research groups! Among tp53 KO cell-lines, the hTERT-RPE1 cell line has been used as the host for the knocking out of TP53 in six different studies. The hTERT-immortalized retinal pigment epithelial cell line, hTERT RPE-1, is widely used in research to model cell division and DNA repair!