NMT1 and cancer: CRISPR/Cas9 KOs in 1078 cancer cell lines revealed that while NMT2 (average gene effect score = 0.171 ± 0.003) is a non-essential gene, NMT1 can be characterized as an essential gene in cancer cells with an average gene effect score of 0.855 ± 0.015 (Fig. 1I, J).