A Crisp Discovery To Further Strengthen Human Control Over Microbe Physiology

Human`s curiosity and the never ending hunger to mend his surroundings per his needs has done wonders, with extraordinary things now possible, things that would have been, in earlier times termed paranormal or magical.

 

- Abhishek Gonga

From the discovery of living cell by Anton van Leeuwenhoek in 1670 to controlling the physiology of these minuscule organisms, we have come a long way. These microbes have provided us great insight into the biological realm and innumerable fields have emerged as a consequence.

Biotechnology, immunology, and microbiology are few disciplines which are at the forefront of scientific research on microbes. This article will introduce you to a recent discovery that has the promise of changing the way we deal with microbes in general and their genetic makeup in particular.

Francisco Mojica was the man whose mind was enthralled by observation of palindrome repeats along a certain stretch of microbial DNA, and his work on this unusual observation, along with those of others around the world finally provided humanity, a powerful tool for very precise targeted genome modification “THE CRISPR/CAS9 SYSTEM”.

In the microbial systems where it functions, it plays the role of microbial guardian protecting it from external atrocities say e.g. plasmids and viruses that tend to modify the native genome of the organism to its benefit. And interestingly its working resembles the way our acquired immune system works.

CRISPR stands for Clustered, Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, and as the name suggests, these are palindrome repeats (read same when read in opposite direction e.g.-HANNAH, on anti parallel strands of DNA) on the length of microbe DNA.