Hindering heritable hearing loss

Nearly half of all deafness cases arise from genetic factors, yet there are limited treatment options available for inherited hearing loss. David Liu and colleagues develop a genome-editing approach to target a dominantly inherited form of deafness. In a mouse model of human deafness, CRISPR–Cas9 editing can disrupt the mutant allele and reduce hearing loss. The results support the potential utility of protein–RNA complex delivery in post-mitotic cells as a gene-editing strategy for some autosomal-dominant diseases.