preview

The Power To Edit Genomes Quickly And Effectively Is Here

Good Essays

The power to edit genomes quickly and effectively is here and it is in the form of Cas9. Recent discoveries have shown that the complex has the power that can activate, deactivate, and make genes locatable. It can also add genes and remove genes from the genome. Although this mechanism is not completely man made, we have made modifications to make it do what we want. It was originally a defense mechanism for bacteriophages. Now we have made it capable of changing mutated genes into working ones with a quick removal of base pairs. Humans have succeeded in changing genomes in many species including Drosophila. Because of its youth as a system, it has a incredibly bright future. The power to possibly cure disease like Alzheimer’s and edit …show more content…

This was done by Cong et al and Mali et al. Following these findings, in 2015 it was voted science breakthrough of the year by the American Association for Advancement of Science(*). This breakthrough opened the door for many opportunities to use this tool to edit genomes in plants, animals, and bacteria. This paper is going to focus on the Cas9 system. Cas9 has a general mechanism of how it works and operates. Further studies and modification to the system have introduced more ways for Cas9 to work. The general mechanism is cleaving the DNA intended DNA portion out of the host genome. This was the original defense mechanism used by bacteria against viruses. In this system, small RNA pieces seek out matching DNA sequences tell the Cas9 where to start cutting the DNA that was inserted by the virus. After the DNA had been cut it was put back together by repairing mechanisms called non homologous end joining (NHEJ) which will be explained later in the paper. One variation of this mechanism is called “nicking”. This modified the Cas9 nuclease to only cut one strand of DNA at a time. The benefit of nicking is that you are able to get a more specific cut of the DNA strand. Two mutations in the nuclease that are relevant for this mutation are. Not only does CRISPR Cas 9 cut out genes it has also been modified for turning on fluorescence. Another function Cas9 can do is break open DNA to make it possible for the insertion of more genes. All of these

Get Access