Fig. 5

Illustration showing the number and taxonomic distribution of gRNA target sites for metazoa and plants that are available for 18S rRNA sequences in the SILVA SSU database v119 [80]. These gRNA-target-site oligonucleotide sequences are used for designing and synthesizing the taxon-specific and the CRISPR-Cas9-compatible sgRNAs that are used to guide CRISPR-Cas9 to cut the 18S rRNA genes of metazoan or plant hosts, but not those of microeukaryotes (protists and fungi). The node size indicates the number of species at each corresponding taxonomic level, while the size of the edge presents the number of gRNA target sites. Nodes and edges with the highest values are purple, while the smallest ones are gray. Only taxa with more than 50 gRNA target sites per taxon are shown