Biology
Following extensive global coverage of the groundbreaking CRISPR technology, we revisit the research as first revealed in Projects Magazine that helped bring about this exciting new tool for genomic editing and which holds huge potential in the fields of biotechnology and medicine.
In a 1987 paper, researchers at Osaka
University described an unusual segment of DNA consisting of short, directly repeating nucleotide
sequences flanked by
unique segments. At the time, this was an innocuous side-note in a paper about a bacterial enzyme, and the researchers
short
stated that ‘the biological significance of these sequences is unknown.’ However, as it turns out, this was the first step on a road to discovering a groundbreaking new tool for genetic manipulation. Twenty six years later, the floodgates have opened in the scientific community. A
constant stream of papers has been appearing in prominent journals espousing the merits of what is known as the CRISPR-Cas system as a simple and versatile tool for genomic editing. At the heart of the breakthrough are Professor Emmanuelle Charpentier and her students
Elitza Deltcheva and Krzysztof
Genomic scissors created from bacterial immune system
Chylinski from Umeå University, Sweden and her collaborators Professor Jennifer Doudna and Dr. Martin Jinek at the University of California in Berkeley, USA. “Our discovery stemmed from our interest
in a family of small regulatory RNAs in bacteria,” says Charpentier. “While looking for
immune system of these, my laboratory came across an
RNA, which we named tracrRNA, that was involved in the
the
bacteria against invading genomes.” Charpentier and her laboratory were
looking at part of what is known as the CRISPR
(clustered regularly interspaced
short palindromic repeat) system. This is an adaptive immune system present in bacteria and archaea that integrates
short DNA
fragments from viruses and plasmids into a specific area of the host cell genome, allowing the host to remember the genetic fingerprint of invaders and then destroy the DNA that these invaders implant inside of its own cells. “My laboratory had found an endonuclease,
Cas9, which was guided by a two-RNA structure that could induce
site AT A GLANCE MAIN CONTACT specific
Prof. Emmanuelle Charpentier Emmanuelle Charpentier is Professor at the Hannover Medical School and Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, and Alexander von Humboldt Professor in Germany, and Associated Professor at the Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden (EMBL Partnership for Molecular Medicine) at Umeå University in Sweden.
54 Insight Publishers | Projects
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