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CRISPR — a widespread system that provides acquired resistance against phages in bacteria and archaea

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 6, pages 181–186 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

Arrays of clustered, regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPRs) are widespread in the genomes of many bacteria and almost all archaea. These arrays are composed of direct repeats that are separated by similarly sized non-repetitive spacers. CRISPR arrays, together with a group of associated proteins, confer resistance to phages, possibly by an RNA-interference-like mechanism. This Progress discusses the structure and function of this newly recognized antiviral mechanism.

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Figure 1: CRISPR structure and function.
Figure 2: Applications of CRISPRs.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank H. Garcia Martin, M. J. Blow, A. Visel and G. Tyson for helpful discussions. This work was performed under the auspices of the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Biological and Environmental Research Program at the University of California, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory under contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC52-07NA27344 and Los Alamos National Laboratory under contract No. DE-AC02-06NA25396.

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  1. Rotem Sorek, Victor Kunin and Philip Hugenholtz are at the Joint Genome Institute, 2800 Mitchell Drive, Walnut Creek, California 94598, USA.,

    Rotem Sorek, Victor Kunin & Philip Hugenholtz

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  1. Rotem Sorek
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Correspondence to Rotem Sorek.

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DATABASES

Entrez Genome Project

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=genomeprj

Campylobacter jejuni

Clostridium difficile

Corynebacterium diphtheriae

Escherichia coli

Haloferax volcanii

Methanocaldococcus jannaschii

Mycobacterium avium

Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Myxococcus xanthus

Pyrococcus abyssii

Streptococcus thermophilus

Sulfolobus acidocaldarius

Thermotoga maritima

Thermotoga neapolitana

Verminephrobacter eiseniae

NCBI COGs

cas1

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Sorek, R., Kunin, V. & Hugenholtz, P. CRISPR — a widespread system that provides acquired resistance against phages in bacteria and archaea. Nat Rev Microbiol 6, 181–186 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro1793

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