published-canonicalconceptmaha-epistemic/1.0

Prime editing

The founding study demonstrated multiple edit classes in specified cellular systems. This record preserves the distinction between those experiments and claims about delivery, organism-level safety, durable clinical benefit, or broad therapeutic readiness.

Bounded definition

A genome-editing method coupling a Cas9 nickase–reverse-transcriptase fusion with a prime-editing guide RNA that identifies a target and encodes a desired edit.

What was demonstrated

Prime editing joins target recognition, a nickase, reverse transcription, and an extended guide RNA into a programmable editing workflow. The founding paper reports several classes of intended edits across named cell systems and loci.

The unit of evidence is the particular editor, guide, target, cell system, protocol, assay, and comparison—not the phrase “prime editing” in isolation.

Claims: urn:maha:claim:prime-editing-demonstration

What remains outside this record

Delivery, tissue specificity, immune response, unintended edits, genomic consequences, durability, manufacturing, dose, and clinical outcomes require separate records and cannot be inferred from cell-system demonstrations.

The founding result establishes a method and an experimental capability. It does not authorize medical use or predict a treatment outcome.

Claim ledger

Every proposition keeps its own evidence state.

empirical-claimsingle-study

The 2019 founding study demonstrated targeted substitutions, insertions, and deletions using prime editors in four human cell lines and primary post-mitotic mouse cortical neurons, with efficiency varying by edit and system.

Scope
The experiments, cell systems, loci, editor variants, assays, and comparisons reported in the founding Nature paper and its supplementary information.
Boundary
The experiments do not establish safe delivery, whole-organism efficacy, long-term clinical outcomes, or suitability for any individual treatment.
Uncertainty
The source reports experiment-specific means and variation; there is no single valid efficiency or error interval for prime editing across targets and biological systems.
Replication
This Phase 1 record is deliberately bounded to the founding study and does not yet compile independent replication evidence.

Primary sources

Citation, locator, rights, and boundary travel together.

  1. Source 1 · Nature

    Search-and-replace genome editing without double-strand breaks or donor DNA

    Andrew V. Anzalone, Peyton B. Randolph, Jessie R. Davis, Alexander A. Sousa, Luke W. Koblan, et al.

    Exact locator
    Abstract; Figures 1–5; Methods; Extended Data; Supplementary Tables 1–5.
    Establishes
    The paper introduces the prime-editing architecture and reports targeted edit classes across specified human cell lines and primary mouse neurons with experiment-dependent efficiencies and byproducts.
    Boundary
    It is not clinical evidence, does not establish delivery to human tissues, and does not provide a universal safety or efficacy estimate for all prime-editor designs.
    Rights basis
    citation with paraphrase · The Maha page paraphrases the reported method and scope, links to the version of record, and reproduces no paywalled passage.
    Declared interests
    The publisher record states that authors filed patent applications and identifies company relationships involving genome-editing technologies.