Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)
In the past decade, CRISPR came onto the scene and made revolutionary advances in genome editing, and now it has become powerful a tool in different areas of life sciences research. CRISPR-Cas stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats-CRISPR-associated. CRISPR was initially known in bacteria, specifically E. coli , in 1987. It is the adaptive immune system in prokaryotes where small guide RNAs are employed for sequence-specific interference with invading nucleic acids. CRISPR-Cas is made up of a genomic locus dubbed CRISPR that incorporates short repeating elements (repeats) separated by unique sequences (spacers) that can come from mobile genetic elements (MGEs) like bacteriophages, transposons, or plasmids. An AT-rich leader sequence precedes the CRISPR array, which is normally flanked by a set of case genes that code for Cas proteins. According to the structural composition of the effector genes, the CRISPR-Cas system is split into two classes. The ty...