CRISPR activation enables high-fidelity reprogramming into human pluripotent stem cells

Conventional reprogramming methods rely on the ectopic expression of transcription factors to reprogram somatic cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). The forced expression of transcription factors may lead to off-target gene activation and heterogeneous reprogramming, resulting in the emergence of alternative cell types and aberrant iPSCs. Activation of endogenous pluripotency factors by CRISPR activation (CRISPRa) can reduce this heterogeneity. Here, we describe a high-efficiency reprogramming of human somatic cells into iPSCs using optimized CRISPRa. Efficient reprogramming was dependent on the additional targeting of the embryo genome activation-enriched Alu-motif and the miR-302/367 locus. Single-cell transcriptome analysis revealed that the optimized CRISPRa reprogrammed cells more directly and specifically into the pluripotent state when compared to the conventional reprogramming method. These findings support the use of CRISPRa for high-quality pluripotent reprogramming of human cells.Peer reviewe

Evaluation of business continuity plan maturity level using business continuity maturity model

Business Continuity Plan (BCP) plays an important part in ensuring the business continuity of an organization in the event of major disruptions. In order to ensure the continuity of their critical business functions and critical services during and after a disaster, healthcare organizations such as hospitals, clinics, hospices and others can implement BCP models in their respective organizations to ensure their business continuity during and after disruptive incidents. After implementing BCP models in their respective healthcare organizations how can they ensure the BCP models will be useful and effective when disasters strike. Therefore, maturity models can help to analyze the maturity level of the BCP model. The higher the level of maturity of the BCP models, the higher the probability of effectiveness and usefulness of the BCP models. The goal of this research is to determine how compliance the existing maturity models for business continuity towards ISO 22301 standard and to map existing BCP healthcare model with business continuity maturity model