Neighbouring cells can recognise and communicate with each other by direct binding between cell surface receptor and ligand pairs. Examples of cellular recognition events include pathogen entry into a host cell, sperm–egg fusion, and self/nonself discrimination by the immune system. Despite growing appreciation of cell surface recognition molecules as potential therapeutic targets, identifying key factors contributing to cellular recognition remains technically challenging to perform on a genome-wide scale. Recently, genome-scale clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) knockout or activation (CRISPR-KO/CRISPRa) screens have been applied to identify the molecular determinants of cellular recognition. In this review, we discuss how CRISPR-KO/CRISPRa screening has contributed to our understanding of cellular recognition processes, and how it can be applied to investigate these important interactions in a range of biological contexts.

相邻细胞可以通过细胞表面受体和配体对之间的直接结合来识别并相互通信。细胞识别事件的例子包括病原体进入宿主细胞，精卵融合以及免疫系统的自我/非自我区分。尽管人们日益认识到将细胞表面识别分子作为潜在的治疗靶标，但鉴定出有助于细胞识别的关键因素在全基因组范围内仍然存在技术挑战。最近，已应用基因组规模的簇状规则间隔的短回文重复序列（CRISPR）敲除或激活（CRISPR-KO / CRISPRa）筛选来鉴定细胞识别的分子决定因素。在这篇评论中