CRISPR-Cas9 Induced Genome Editing, New Hope for Plant Molecular Biology: A Review

What makes CRISPR so revolutionary is that it’s incredibly precise, the Cas9 enzyme is highly site specific and will act only on desired location. And also it’s incredibly cheap and easy. In the past, it might have cost thousands of dollars and weeks or months of fiddling to alter a gene. The CRISPR/Cas (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/CRISPR-associated proteins) system was first identified in bacteria and archaea and can degrade exogenous substrates. Gene editing itself isn’t new. Various techniques to knock out genes have been around for years. It was developed as a gene editing technology in 2013. CRISPR/Cas9 technology is evolved from a type-II bacterial immune system and represents a new generation of targeted genome editing technology that can be applied to nearly all organisms. For the first time, researchers have been able to detect and characterize the mechanism of action by which the CRISPR complex binds and cleaves DNA using electron microscopy. We have unlimited possibilities. CRISPR helps us see that GMO/non-GMO binaries are overly simplistic. This one tool can perform many DNA nips and tucks and can up-regulate or down-regulate genes in ways that are not transgenic — yet are by no means inconsequential. Many CRISPR edits; won’t involve any questions about foreign DNA, but will be equally dramatic in their effects. In crops and animals, “gene knockouts” can eliminate genes that affect food quality, divert energy away from valuable end products, and confer susceptibility to crop diseases.

Keywords: CRISPR, DSB, NHEJ, SSNs, Gene Editing, Cas9.