LwaCas13a haphazardly targets the human transcriptome
Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) associated protein 13a (Cas13a) has been described as a superior tool to short-interfering (si) RNAs for specific gene silencing by targeting RNAs through Watson-Crick binding of the target and activation of nuclease activity. However, we observed that activation of LwaCas13a in mammalian HEK293T cells leads to unspecific targeting RNAs, which led to cell toxicity and death.