Beyond gene editing: the age of chromosome-scale genome engineering.

Chromosome-scale genome engineering is advancing with tools for transfer, elimination, and transplantation in higher eukaryotes, enabling manipulation of megabase regions and whole chromosomes.

• Why it matters: Understanding biological functions and disease states requires insight into chromosome-scale features such as gene dosage, long-range regulation, and three-dimensional genome organization, which are not accessible through local gene editing alone.
• What they did: The authors review the development of chromosome transfer, targeted chromosome elimination, and their integration into transplantation workflows, alongside advances in large DNA assembly, synthetic biology, and genome validation.
• The result: These approaches are making chromosome-scale genome engineering more feasible, supporting efforts to understand, build, and repair genomes, despite current technical barriers and analytical challenges.