It's great to finally see a real biology question here on Musing, so let me try to explain it as simple as possible. I am not a molecular biologist, but I learned a lot about this during my education, so hopefully I will be able to make it understandable.
The CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) genes are originally found in bacteria and archaea (these are pretty much just ancient version of bacteria) where they function to prevent the genetic material from getting damaged by forign viral and other invading genetic material.
What the CRISPR and CRISPR-associated (Cas) genes do is that they attach right in front of, and directly after, where the foreign genetic material has been injected on the DNA strand. And then it pretty much just cut the foreign genetic material away from the strand, and it will no longer be part of the genetic material during the next copy.
This was pretty much the extremely short version, and there's a lot of information available if you want to dive deeper into this.
Anyway, CRISPR/Cas9 is also a tool for genetic editing, and it boild down to a lot of the same processes as its original form. By using a guiding RNA (gRNA) molecule, scientists can guide the CRISPR/Cas9 genes to attach to wherever they want in the genetic material of an organism, and then use this to perform a deletion of this genetic material. This is a very quick and easy way of deactivating a gene, since most genes will stop functioning once a part of it is removed.
A modified version of this gene is also able to insert genetic material where the Cas9 gene attaches, which allows for even more advanged genetic editing. To keep this part very simple, the scientists pretty much just injects genetic material into the DNA strand after the original material has been removed, but before enzymes have been able to reattach the strands.
CRISPR/Cas9 is pretty complex, and there are thousands of details that we haven't look at in this post. There's even entire books written about this tool, so there are a lot of resources avilable at libraries if you want to learn more about it.
Thanks for such a great explanation valth! This should be heavily regulated because what happens when the genetic freaks take over? The regular, unedited kids will stand no chance. Genetic freaks will take over sports, science, business and quite possibly, everything else.
Sounds like another unfair advantage the rich will have against all over the world.
I agree with the idea of having it very heavily regulated, but right now it simply isn't. For some reason no one wants to discuss and figure out rules for this yet, but I'm sure we will have to do that in the future once we start seeing some "crazier" results.
We're not quite at the point where we can really genetically engineer humans or big animals yet, but we're able to do it with small invertebrates, bacteria and other small organisms. But it's only a matter of time before we have the knowledge needed to modify bigger organisms. (The reason behind this boils down to the length and complexity of the DNA in the organisms; shorter DNA is obviously a lot easier to research, understand, and modify).
This is a New Era in Molecular Biology. When you are looking for a precise, targeted changes to the genome of living cells the most efficient and reliable way is called crispr genome editing.
CRISPR on its own is a family of DNA sequences in bacteria and archaea
It's great to finally see a real biology question here on Musing, so let me try to explain it as simple as possible. I am not a molecular biologist, but I learned a lot about this during my education, so hopefully I will be able to make it understandable.
The CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) genes are originally found in bacteria and archaea (these are pretty much just ancient version of bacteria) where they function to prevent the genetic material from getting damaged by forign viral and other invading genetic material.
What the CRISPR and CRISPR-associated (Cas) genes do is that they attach right in front of, and directly after, where the foreign genetic material has been injected on the DNA strand. And then it pretty much just cut the foreign genetic material away from the strand, and it will no longer be part of the genetic material during the next copy.
This was pretty much the extremely short version, and there's a lot of information available if you want to dive deeper into this.
Anyway, CRISPR/Cas9 is also a tool for genetic editing, and it boild down to a lot of the same processes as its original form. By using a guiding RNA (gRNA) molecule, scientists can guide the CRISPR/Cas9 genes to attach to wherever they want in the genetic material of an organism, and then use this to perform a deletion of this genetic material. This is a very quick and easy way of deactivating a gene, since most genes will stop functioning once a part of it is removed.
A modified version of this gene is also able to insert genetic material where the Cas9 gene attaches, which allows for even more advanged genetic editing. To keep this part very simple, the scientists pretty much just injects genetic material into the DNA strand after the original material has been removed, but before enzymes have been able to reattach the strands.
CRISPR/Cas9 is pretty complex, and there are thousands of details that we haven't look at in this post. There's even entire books written about this tool, so there are a lot of resources avilable at libraries if you want to learn more about it.
Thanks for such a great explanation valth! This should be heavily regulated because what happens when the genetic freaks take over? The regular, unedited kids will stand no chance. Genetic freaks will take over sports, science, business and quite possibly, everything else.
Sounds like another unfair advantage the rich will have against all over the world.
I agree with the idea of having it very heavily regulated, but right now it simply isn't. For some reason no one wants to discuss and figure out rules for this yet, but I'm sure we will have to do that in the future once we start seeing some "crazier" results.
We're not quite at the point where we can really genetically engineer humans or big animals yet, but we're able to do it with small invertebrates, bacteria and other small organisms. But it's only a matter of time before we have the knowledge needed to modify bigger organisms. (The reason behind this boils down to the length and complexity of the DNA in the organisms; shorter DNA is obviously a lot easier to research, understand, and modify).
This is a New Era in Molecular Biology. When you are looking for a precise, targeted changes to the genome of living cells the most efficient and reliable way is called crispr genome editing.
CRISPR on its own is a family of DNA sequences in bacteria and archaea