What Exactly Is CRISPR Gene Editing? And How Can It Be Used?
You've probably read stories about new research using the gene editing technique CRISPR, also known as CRISPR/Cas9. The scientific community is intrigued by this new technology since it is easier to use, less expensive and more effective than other methods for altering DNA. CRISPR/Cas9 refers to Clustered Regularly Interspersed Short Palindromic Repeats/CRISPR related protein 9. Although the names are an indication of the important characteristics that were discovered during its discovery, they do not reveal much about how it functions since they were created prior to anyone knowing what it was. What does CRISPR/Cas9 do? CRISPR/Cas9 are present in bacteria and is involved in immune defense. Bacteria utilize CRISPR/Cas9 in order to cut up the DNA of invading bacteria that could otherwise end up killing them. We've modified this molecular machinery for an entirely different purpose - to change any chosen letter(s) in the organism's DNA code. One possibility is to ...