CRISPR CAS-9: The future of biotechnology and life
Imagine this, nothing is final forever their is still hope. The past genetic disease and cancer in your genetic line can be erased and re-written. Your eye colour or height will not be genetically definable. Your future kids and yourself can be modified. This is the world of CRISPR CAS-9, a revolutionary discovery that changed the course of genetic engineering forever.
What is Crispr Cas-9?
Clustered Regulary Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats or Crispr for short, is by definition DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) sequences composed of repeats separated into different sequences also called “spacers”. CAS-9 witch stands for Crispr Associated Protein 9 is well, a protein associate with CRISPR. Basically Crispr Cas-9 are proteins and chemicals together targeting specific DNA sequences to edit and/or cut. In a“Ted” talk conducted by Ellen Jorgensen she explains that CRISPR CAS-9 is a two part system. Where the Cas-9 protein is a warhead almost, that wants to chew DNA, every time it gets directed (like a soldier) and the guide RNA is the target mechanism that leads the Cas-9 protein to where it needs to go (like a commander). How does it do this? Well while talking to expert “Dr. Ethan Settembre” a vice president of “one of the worlds largest influenza vaccine producers” (Seqirus) he describes that the guide RNA’s change of 20 proteins (letters) or more can lead to target a specific gene or DNA. When Crispr Cas-9 is directed to where it needs to go it scans the DNA strand composed of adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T) to match a similar or exact guide RNA. From there, it inserts the CRISPR into the double helix, and snip, snip, snips it apart. Because of that, the body would usually start to panic. In a normal case one of two things would start to happen, one, it takes the DNA from the broken sides and splices them together or, two, it takes a similar (homologous) piece of DNA from the other chromosome and replaces the DNA with the “backup deoxyribonucleic acid ”. However, because of Crispr what happens is it “hijacks” the double helix by making the sides of the Crispr similar to the broken sides of the original DNA, still keeping the middle how it was programmed that can be different and not homologous, similar to the famous “Trojan horse”. Like clockwork the DNA splices with the lab made Crispr RNA/DNA, and then the deoxyribonucleic acid is edited and modified. This biotechnology was based on a ancient bacteria and/or virus, along with the immune systems defense, Jennifer Doudna (the co-creator) enlightens at another “TED” talk.
Who invented CRISPR?
Who invented this revolutionary technology, you may ask? Well in general a lot of scientist, and experiments. Although in short Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier. To give a background on Emmanuelle Charpentier, born in 1968, in the current (2022) she is 54 years old is a french scientist. Charpentier has a degree in biochemistry and a PhD in microbiology, and currently is a director and scientific member of Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens. To give a information on Jennifer Doudna, she was born in 1964, in current year (2022) she is 58 years old and has is a american scientist. Doudna has a degree in chemistry and a PhD in biochemistry, and currently is a director of Doudna lab and professor at UC Berkeley. Since the invention of CRISPR CAS-9 in 2011 both the scientists have won awards, such as the Nobel chemistry prize in 2020 , aswell as the Wolf Prize in Medicine in 2020 and the Breakthrough Prize in Life sciences in 2014, and others, all well deserved.
Future of Crispr
As of 2012 there has been a pause/refinement from Charpentier and Doudna and their scientific colleges, much like cloning, to not experiment on human embryos and people. Although in the moment scientists are experimenting on other animals such as monkeys and mice. Chinese scientists have used Crispr for genes on mice embryos and in Philadelphia, scientists have used Crispr to remove genetics leading to the HIV virus in monkeys. In the present people and scientists have debated on the ethics and the limits of CRISPR. However in the future there is hope to use Crispr in ways like designer babies and fancy pets as well as medical benefits. Inspiring story, before the refinement in Crispr technology, Crispr Cas-9 was used on a 13 year old girl with harsh leukemia and was cured! Or removed any visible cancer. So as we know it the future could look incredibly different because of Crispr, all we can do is experiment and discover more with this amazing technology.
The ethics of Crispr
In this day in age you would think that the sky is the limit, and that may be true but at what point is it ethically wrong? How much time till we create a monster or even zombie by accident or on purpose with Crispr? With great power comes greater responsibility. Recently in the last few years some people have been bending these laws, these people are called “bio hackers”. Most famously known Josiah Zayner. Zayner released a video of using and experimenting on himself with Crispr Cas-9. The problem of using Crispr on yourself can be the after affects or miss targeting. At the moment scientists are testing and getting a better understanding of Crispr that could almost eliminate that small parentage of cons on Cas-9. However, these technologies can greatly improve science and medical industries but at the same time it can massively harm it too. For now there is debate on topics such as these. Crispr can achieve these amazing feats but it is limited to animals for the time being. Although, for now this technology is very useful but very controversial.
Conclusion
To conclude, this new tool can make a huge difference in the bio engineering field. All we can do is continue this research and slowly but surely alter the future of our next generation metaphorically , physically and most importantly scientifically.
On other news during this December I have been gifted one of the recently talked about bio hacker’s (Josiah Zyaner) Crispr kit. Through this kit and 8 week experience I will learn what really happens in the Crispr relm and possibly update you on the inner workings of this magnificent tool, but for now I’ll snip you later. (pun intended)
See you next year and thank you for reading this article.
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The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020 [Internet]. NobelPrize.org. [cited 2022 Dec 29]. Available from: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2020/doudna/lecture/4. Rogers K. Jennifer Doudna | American biochemist. In: Encyclopædia Britannica [Internet]. 2019. Available from: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jennifer-Doudna5. Pak E. CRISPR: A game-changing genetic engineering technique [Internet].
Science in the News. Harvard University; 2014. Available from: https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2014/crispr-a-game-changing-genetic-engineering-technique/6.
TED. How CRISPR lets us edit our DNA | Jennifer Doudna [Internet]. YouTube. 2015 [cited 2022 Dec 29]. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdBAHexVYzc7. Lu J.
CRISPR Based Genomic Editing [Internet]. medicine.yale.edu. [cited 2022 Dec 29]. Available from: https://medicine.yale.edu/labmed/ycceh/core_a/crispr/
