CTD2 researchers at the University of California in San Francisco developed a modified Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) CRISPR/dCas9 system. Catalytically inactive dCas9 enables modular and programmable RNA-guided genome regulation in eukaryotes. The CRISPR/dCas9 system has several advantages: i) enables robust gene repression (CRISPRi) or activation (CRISPRa) in human cells, ii) allows specific knockdown with minimal off-target effects in human cells, iii) works efficiently in human and yeast cells, and iv) does not cause double-strand breaks. Plasmid design and construction for CRISPRi (human and yeast cells) are described in the manuscript listed below and are available through a distributor.
https://www.addgene.org/crispr/qi-weissman/
Reference
Gilbert LA, et al. CRISPR-mediated modular RNA-guided regulation of transcription in eukaryotes. Cell. 2013 Jul 18;154(2):442-51. (PMID: 23849981)