Thanks to the speed of CRISPR research, the accolades have come quickly. Last year MIT Technology Review
called CRISPR “the biggest biotech discovery of the century.” The
Breakthrough Prize is just one of several prominent awards Doudna has
won in recent months for her work on CRISPR; National Public Radio
recently reported whispers of a possible Nobel in her future.
[---]
Doudna and other researchers did not pluck the molecules they use for gene editing from thin air. In fact, they stumbled across the CRISPR molecules in nature. Microbes have been using them to edit their own DNA for millions of years, and today they continue to do so all over the planet, from the bottom of the sea to the recesses of our own bodies..
We’ve barely begun to understand how CRISPR works in the natural world. Microbes use it as a sophisticated immune system, allowing them to learn to recognize their enemies. Now scientists are discovering that microbes use CRISPR for other jobs as well. The natural history of CRISPR poses many questions to scientists, for which they don’t have very good answers yet. But it also holds great promise. Doudna and her colleagues harnessed one type of CRISPR, but scientists are finding a vast menagerie of different types. Tapping that diversity could lead to more effective gene editing technology, or open the way to applications no one has thought of yet.
[---]
At the time, Koonin, an evolutionary biologist at the National Center for Biotechnology Information in Bethesda, Md., had been puzzling over CRISPR and Cas genes for a few years. As soon as he learned of the discovery of bits of virus DNA in CRISPR spacers, he realized that microbes were using CRISPR as a weapon against viruses.
Koonin knew that microbes are not passive victims of virus attacks. They have several lines of defense. Koonin thought that CRISPR and Cas enzymes provide one more. In Koonin’s hypothesis, bacteria use Cas enzymes to grab fragments of viral DNA. They then insert the virus fragments into their own CRISPR sequences. Later, when another virus comes along, the bacteria can use the CRISPR sequence as a cheat sheet to recognize the invader.
Scientists didn’t know enough about the function of CRISPR and Cas enzymes for Koonin to make a detailed hypothesis. But his thinking was provocative enough for a microbiologist named Rodolphe Barrangou to test it. To Barrangou, Koonin’s idea was not just fascinating, but potentially a huge deal for his employer at the time, the yogurt maker Danisco. Danisco depended on bacteria to convert milk into yogurt, and sometimes entire cultures would be lost to outbreaks of bacteria-killing viruses. Now Koonin was suggesting that bacteria could use CRISPR as a weapon against these enemies.
To test Koonin’s hypothesis, Barrangou and his colleagues infected the milk-fermenting microbe Streptococcus thermophilus with two strains of viruses. The viruses killed many of the bacteria, but some survived. When those resistant bacteria multiplied, their descendants turned out to be resistant too. Some genetic change had occurred. Barrangou and his colleagues found that the bacteria had stuffed DNA fragments from the two viruses into their spacers. When the scientists chopped out the new spacers, the bacteria lost their resistance.
Barrangou, now an associate professor at North Carolina State University, said that this discovery led many manufacturers to select for customized CRISPR sequences in their cultures, so that the bacteria could withstand virus outbreaks. “If you’ve eaten yogurt or cheese, chances are you’ve eaten CRISPR-ized cells,” he said.
- More Here from Carl Zimmer
[---]
Doudna and other researchers did not pluck the molecules they use for gene editing from thin air. In fact, they stumbled across the CRISPR molecules in nature. Microbes have been using them to edit their own DNA for millions of years, and today they continue to do so all over the planet, from the bottom of the sea to the recesses of our own bodies..
We’ve barely begun to understand how CRISPR works in the natural world. Microbes use it as a sophisticated immune system, allowing them to learn to recognize their enemies. Now scientists are discovering that microbes use CRISPR for other jobs as well. The natural history of CRISPR poses many questions to scientists, for which they don’t have very good answers yet. But it also holds great promise. Doudna and her colleagues harnessed one type of CRISPR, but scientists are finding a vast menagerie of different types. Tapping that diversity could lead to more effective gene editing technology, or open the way to applications no one has thought of yet.
[---]
At the time, Koonin, an evolutionary biologist at the National Center for Biotechnology Information in Bethesda, Md., had been puzzling over CRISPR and Cas genes for a few years. As soon as he learned of the discovery of bits of virus DNA in CRISPR spacers, he realized that microbes were using CRISPR as a weapon against viruses.
Koonin knew that microbes are not passive victims of virus attacks. They have several lines of defense. Koonin thought that CRISPR and Cas enzymes provide one more. In Koonin’s hypothesis, bacteria use Cas enzymes to grab fragments of viral DNA. They then insert the virus fragments into their own CRISPR sequences. Later, when another virus comes along, the bacteria can use the CRISPR sequence as a cheat sheet to recognize the invader.
Scientists didn’t know enough about the function of CRISPR and Cas enzymes for Koonin to make a detailed hypothesis. But his thinking was provocative enough for a microbiologist named Rodolphe Barrangou to test it. To Barrangou, Koonin’s idea was not just fascinating, but potentially a huge deal for his employer at the time, the yogurt maker Danisco. Danisco depended on bacteria to convert milk into yogurt, and sometimes entire cultures would be lost to outbreaks of bacteria-killing viruses. Now Koonin was suggesting that bacteria could use CRISPR as a weapon against these enemies.
To test Koonin’s hypothesis, Barrangou and his colleagues infected the milk-fermenting microbe Streptococcus thermophilus with two strains of viruses. The viruses killed many of the bacteria, but some survived. When those resistant bacteria multiplied, their descendants turned out to be resistant too. Some genetic change had occurred. Barrangou and his colleagues found that the bacteria had stuffed DNA fragments from the two viruses into their spacers. When the scientists chopped out the new spacers, the bacteria lost their resistance.
Barrangou, now an associate professor at North Carolina State University, said that this discovery led many manufacturers to select for customized CRISPR sequences in their cultures, so that the bacteria could withstand virus outbreaks. “If you’ve eaten yogurt or cheese, chances are you’ve eaten CRISPR-ized cells,” he said.
- More Here from Carl Zimmer
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