It all started with yogurt. To make it, dairy producers have long employed the help of Streptococcus thermophilus, bacteria that gobble up the lactose in milk and poop out lactic acid. It wasn’t until 2005, though, that a young microbiologist named Rodolphe Barrangou discovered that S. thermophilus contained odd chunks of repeating DNA sequences—Crisprs—and that those sequences were keeping it safe from the viruses that can attack it and result in spoilage. (If the thermophilus is gone, nastier bacteria can move in and feed off the lactose, ruining the product.)
Before long, DuPont bought the Danish company that Barrangou worked for and began using strains carrying this naturally occurring Crispr to protect all of its yogurt and cheese cultures. Since DuPont owns about 50 percent of the global dairy culture market, you’ve probably already eaten Crispr-optimized cheese on your pizza.
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2012 - A molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard named Feng Zhang published a paper in Science showing that Crispr-Cas9 could edit human cells. In fact, with the right genetic guides, you can Crispr pretty much anything.
On the eve of the Second International Summit on Human Gene Editing, news broke that a Chinese scientist named He Jiankui, who was scheduled to speak at the meeting, had been recruiting couples in an effort to create the first Crispr’d babies. Hours later, He Jiankui himself posted five slickly produced promotional videos to YouTube claiming to have already done so: “Two beautiful little Chinese girls, Lulu and Nana, came crying into the world as healthy as any other babies a few weeks ago.” The only difference was that the twins had been injected with Crispr when they were still embryos, in an effort to eliminate a gene called CCR5 and make them resistant to HIV. In a presentation to the summit a few days later. He had ordered his Crispr components from US biotech companies, in violation of their “research use only” policies. Within days, He had been fired from his university post and all his research activities were suspended. A subsequent investigation by government authorities found that He violated Chinese law, and he is now serving a three-year prison sentence.
Take industrial fermentation, for example. With the help of old-school genetic engineering techniques, scientists have already reprogrammed microbes like E. Coli and brewer’s yeast into factories that can make everything from insulin to ethanol. Crispr will rapidly enlarge the catalog of designer chemicals, molecules, and materials that biorefineries can produce.
Each new enzyme will not only advance Crispr’s gene editing powers but also extend its capabilities far beyond DNA manipulation.
You see, slicing and dicing isn’t the only interesting thing to do to DNA. Tricked-out new Crispr systems could temporarily toggle genes on and off or surveil the genome to fix mutations as they happen in real time, no snipping required. The first would let scientists treat human diseases where there’s too much or too little of a certain substance—say, insulin—without permanently altering a patient’s DNA. The second could one day prevent diseases like cancer from occurring altogether. The specificity of Crispr, perhaps more than its actual cutting mechanism, will inspire applications we can’t yet imagine.
A 34-year-old woman who has struggled with sickle cell anemia for most of her life, just celebrated a year of being symptom-free. To treat her debilitating illness, researchers extracted some of her stem cells, used Crispr to reprogram them to produce healthy blood cells, and returned them to her body.
These unintended modifications, called off-target effects, could theoretically prevent tissues from functioning properly or could jump-start cancers. Figuring out how to limit these off-target effects is a major goal of current Crispr research.
Meanwhile, consumers can expect to see the first Crispr-designed foods lining grocery store shelves very soon. Because Crispr doesn’t use plant pathogens to manipulate DNA (the old GMO-generating method), the USDA has given a free regulatory pass to gene-edited crops, which may allow drought-tolerant soybeans and extra-starchy corn to ease into your favorite processed foods without any additional labeling. Already a dozen or so startups have popped up to challenge the Bayer/Monsanto, DowDupont/Pioneers.
src - https://www.wired.com/story/wired-guide-to-crispr/
ref - Fattened, Genetically Engineered Algae Might Fuel the Future
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