Quotes About CRISPR

CRISPR-enabled 'gene drives' enable us to make changes to the germ-line of organisms permanent such that changes spread through the entire wild population, including making species extinct on demand. Unlike nuclear weapons such technologies are not complex, expensive, and able to be kept secret for a long time.

With CRISPR/CAS9, any gene whose sequence is known can be removed, replaced, turned on, or turned off, and all this can be done in the equivalent of someone's garage.

Crisper is great. The future of gene therapy looks bright.

Every little decision adds up, and even more as you live longer. That is what good genetic engineers do! Your lifestyle choices change the functioning of your DNA switches as surely (and in a much cheaper and easier way) than CRISPR.

We found that CAS9 has the ability to make a double-stranded break in DNA at sites that are programmed by a small RNA molecule. What was so important was that we could really show how the CAS9 protein worked.

Scientists were able to replicate this process—successfully replacing a viral sequence with other types of DNA and inserting that DNA in the target cell—making "genomic surgery" possible. CRISPR rapidly replaced older methods of genetic engineering, making gene editing cleaner, more accurate, and much faster.

CRISPR spacers are first transcribed into a long contiguous RNA, which is then sliced into discrete CRISPR RNAs corresponding to individual spacers. This RNA then forms a complex with Cas proteins that targets the corresponding

Understanding how Cas9 is able to locate specific 20-base-pair target sequences within genomes that are millions to billions of base pairs long may enable improvements to gene targeting and genome editing efforts in bacteria and other types of cells.

Much of the attention paid to CRISPR these days involves its potential to make inheritable (germline) edits in humans that will be passed along to all the cells of all of our future descendants and have the potential to alter our species. These edits are done in reproductive cells or early-stage embryos. This is what occurred with the CRISPR baby twins in China in 2018, and it is the controversial topic that I will discuss later in this book.

The invention of CRISPR and the plague of COVID will hasten our transition to the third great revolution of modern times. These revolutions

The invention of CRISPR and the plague of COVID will hasten our transition to the third great revolution of modern times. These revolutions arose from the discovery, beginning just over a century ago, of the three fundamental kernels of our existence: the atom, the bit, and the gene.

Before getting into CRISPR, Zayner tried a variety of synthetic biology experiments, including on himself. To treat his gastrointestinal problems, he performed a fecal transplant (don't ask) to transform his gut's microbiome. He did the procedure in a hotel room with two filmmakers documenting the scene, and (in case you really do want to know how it works) it became a short documentary called Gut Hack that can be found online.2

The easiest of these viruses to study are the ones that attack bacteria, and they were dubbed (remember the term, for it will reappear when we discuss the discovery of CRISPR) "phages," which was short for "bacteriophages," meaning bacteria-eaters.

The gene-editing tool that Doudna and others developed in 2012 is based on a virus-fighting trick used by bacteria, which have been battling viruses for more than a billion years. In their DNA, bacteria develop clustered repeated sequences, known as CRISPRs, that can remember and then destroy viruses that attack them.

Developers and entrepreneurs may someday be able to use CRISPR-based home testing kits as platforms on which to build a variety of biomedical apps: virus detection, disease diagnosis, cancer screening, nutritional analyses, microbiome assessments, and genetic tests. "We can get people in their homes to check if they have the flu or just a cold," says Zhang.

He named these "CRISPR-associated," or Cas, enzymes.

What none of the participants discussed was a longer-range prospect: using CRISPR to engineer inheritable edits in humans that would make our children, and all of our descendants, less vulnerable to virus infections. These genetic improvements could permanently alter the human race.

It was fitting that a virus-fighting team would be led by a CRISPR pioneer. The gene-editing tool that Doudna and others developed in 2012 is based on a virus-fighting trick used by bacteria, which have been battling viruses for more than a billion years. In their DNA, bacteria develop clustered repeated sequences, known as CRISPRs, that can remember and then destroy viruses that attack them.

There's already a lot of active research going on using the Crispr technology to fix diseases like Duchenne muscular dystrophy or cystic fibrosis or Huntington's disease. They're all diseases that have known genetic causes, and we now have the technology that can repair those mutations to provide, we hope, patients with a normal life.

CRISPR editing will allow us to enhance ourselves.

It may be possible in the not-too-distant future to use CRISPR to create whole new species.