The Advancement of CRISPR in the News

November 14th, 2015  |  Published in Latest news, Research highlights

For much of the past century, biology has been consumed with three essential questions: What does each gene do? How do we find the genetic mutations that make us sick? And how can we overcome them? With the CRISPR gene editing technology, some claim the answers have become attainable, and that we are closing in on a sort of grand unified theory of genetics.

CRISPR (Clustered Short Interspaced Palindromic Repeats) is part of the adaptive immune system and is used by many bacteria to protect themselves from foreign viruses and plasmids. CRISPR- Cas9 has the ability to direct its protein, Cas 9, to precisely cut a segment of DNA at any point within the genome and then find the complement to put the ends back together.

Many scientists are working to develop technology and applications for using CRISPR. Feng Zhang, the Broad Institute, and MIT work together as a team and Jennifer Doudna of UC Berkeley and Emmanuelle Charpentier of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Germany work together.

Two recent articles in the NYTimes Magazine —The CRISPR Quandary— and the New YorkerThe Gene Hackers— both discuss the manipulative techniques of CRISPR and the advances scientists have made in the field of genome editing.

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