INDUCE-seq: a novel tool for next generation risk assessment

INDUCE-seq was originally developed to detect DSBs induced by biological agents such as CRISPR-Cas9 and restriction endonucleases.

It has been shown that INDUCE-seq can simultaneously detect low-level endogenous breaks that occur due to regular biological processes and higher-level breaks that can be induced by chemicals or genome editing (Dobbs et al. 2020).

Therefore, the overall aim of this research project is to further develop INDUCE-seq for the quantitative detection of chemicallyinduced genomic double strand breaks in human cells as to establish tools for next generation risk assessment. The ultimate goal is the eventual replacement of animal-based approaches for genotoxicity testing.

The main objectives include further developing the INDUCE-seq methodology for the detection and quantification of chemicallyinduced DSBs, development of bioinformatic tools for the analysis of these DSBs and subsequent integration of genomic data with data from transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic assays.