Many scientific discoveries are accidental but only very few of them have the power to change the course of human life. One such is the story of the CRISPR-Cas system. In the late 2000’s it was discovered that certain bacteria have a natural immune system to fight against the invading virus and part of this immunity comes by retaining some of the viral DNA that bacterial cell machinery later recognizes and destroys using genetic scissors i.e., nucleases. Also, these bacteria have developed a novel way of storing these viral DNA, interspersed between short repetitive sequences of its own DNA called CRISPR DNA. Within a few years after this discovery, in 2012, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna utilized some of the key components of this ancient immune system and developed a new tool for genome editing that is multiple times faster and more targeted than the available methods, earning them the Nobel prize in Chemistry 2020. Since its discovery and development, the CRISPR-Cas system has not only advanced our understanding of fundamental biology but was also used to increase crop production, develop new therapies for cancer treatment, and also promises to cure inherited diseases. CRISPR’s story is a prime example of how a fundamental discovery found its way rapidly into applications in biotechnology and medicine. In this talk, I will discuss the discovery, molecular mechanisms, applications and controversies of the CRISPR-Cas system.

References:
• Press release: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2020.
• Fuguo Jiang & Jennifer Doudna, CRISPR-Cas9 Structures and Mechanisms, Annu. Rev. Biophys, 2017, 46, 505-529.
• Garneau et al, The CRISPR/Cas bacterial immune system cleaves bacteriophage and plasmid DNA, Nature, 2010, 468, 67-71.
• Jinek et al, A Programmable Dual-RNA–Guided DNA Endonuclease in Adaptive Bacterial Immunity, Science, 2012, 337, 816-821.
• Mazhar Adli, The CRISPR tool kit for genome editing and beyond, Nature Communications, 2018, 9, 1911.