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Biotechnology

Rewriting a genome

Nature volume 495, pages 50–51 (2013)Cite this article

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A bacterial enzyme that uses guide RNA molecules to target DNA for cleavage has been adopted as a programmable tool to site-specifically modify genomes of cells and organisms, from bacteria and human cells to whole zebrafish.

In a 1987 paper, researchers at Osaka University in Japan reported an apparently minor finding. While investigating the sequence of a bacterial gene that encodes the enzyme alkaline phosphatase, they discovered an unusual segment of neighbouring DNA that consisted of short, directly repeating nucleotide sequences flanked by short unique segments1. They noted that “the biological significance of these sequences is not known”. Fast-forward almost three decades, and what initially seemed to be an obscure observation is now being used to open the door to easy manipulation of the genomes of a multitude of organisms. Five papers published within a month of each other, in Science2,3 and Nature Biotechnology4,5,6, report the application of such bacterial sequences — now referred to as CRISPR–Cas systems7 — as a simple and versatile tool for genomic editing.

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Figure 1: Targeted genome editing with RNA-guided Cas9.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Regulation in Infection Biology, Emmanuelle Charpentier is at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, 38124 Braunschweig, Germany, in the Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine Sweden, Umeå University, Sweden, and at the Hanover Medical School, Hanover, Germany.,

    Emmanuelle Charpentier

  2. Departments of Molecular and Cell Biology and of Chemistry, and in the Physical Biosciences Division, Jennifer A. Doudna is at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley.,

    Jennifer A. Doudna

Authors
  1. Emmanuelle Charpentier
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  2. Jennifer A. Doudna
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Correspondence to Emmanuelle Charpentier or Jennifer A. Doudna.

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Charpentier, E., Doudna, J. Rewriting a genome. Nature 495, 50–51 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/495050a

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