CRISPRs: Ushering in a New Age of Gene Editing

CRISPRs, which were first described in E. coli in 1987, have since seized the attention of the global biotechnology community. Along with CRISPR-associated (Cas) proteins, these Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats originally arose as a bacterial defense system again bacteriophages and plasmids. CRISPRs now are increasingly being used as next-generation genome-engineering tools. Researchers have been quick to focus on their gene-editing potential, allowing them to cut DNA at precise lo