CRISPR Takes Off

If you haven't heard of CRISPR, you must not have to mess around with gene expression. And not everyone does, true, but we sure do count on that sort of thing in biomedical research. And this is a very useful new technique to do it: In 2007, scientists from Danisco, a Copenhagen-based food ingredient company now owned by DuPont, found a way to boost the phage defenses of this workhouse microbe. They exposed the bacterium to a phage and showed that this essentially vaccinated it against that virus (Science, 23 March 2007, p. 1650). The trick has enabled DuPont to create heartier bacterial strains for food production. It also revealed something fundamental: Bacteria have a kind of adaptive immune system, which enables them to fight off repeated attacks by specific phages. That immune system has suddenly become important for more than food scientists and microbiologists, because of a valuable feature: It takes aim at specific DNA sequences. In January, four research teams reported harnessing the system, called CRISPR for peculiar features in the DNA of bacteria that deploy it, to target the destruction of specific genes in human cells. And in the following 8 months, various groups have used it to delete, add, activate, or suppress targeted genes in human cells, mice, rats, zebrafish, bacteria, fruit flies, yeast, nematodes, and crops, demonstrating broad utility for the technique. Biologists had recently developed several new ways to precisely manipulate genes, but CRISPR's "e...
Source: In the Pipeline - Category: Chemists Tags: Biological News Source Type: blogs