ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,331,292, issued on June 17, was assigned to The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York (New York).

"RNA-guided DNA integration using Tn7-like transposons" was invented by Samuel Henry Sternberg (New York) and Sanne Eveline Klompe (New York).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "In certain embodiments, the present systems and methods use Tn7-like transposons that encode CRISPR-Cas systems for programmable, RNA-guided DNA integration. For example, the CRISPR-Cas machinery directs the Tn7 transposon-associated proteins to integrate DNA downstream of a target site (e.g., a genomic target site) recognized by a guide RNA (gRNA)."

The...