CRISPR The Gene Editor that Could Change the World
Many people have heard about CRISPR, but very few actually know what it is, how it works, or even what the big deal is. Well scientists have been excited about the CRISPR system for a while and hopefully, even if you aren't a scientist, I can spread some light on why this will be a big deal going forward. So What Is It? CRISPR stands for Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. Palindromes are sequences that read the same backwards and forward. So for example madam is a palindrome because it spells the same thing backwards in forwards. In DNA, ACDCA would be a palindrome. CRISPR are specifically DNA sequences found in bacteria, and play major part of the bacterial defense system from things such as viruses. So you might be wondering how it does that? Well, each palindromic repeat is followed by DNA that is nonpalindromic. These pieces are foreign DNA from something that tried to invade the bacteria perviously. Think of it like some guy breaks into your house, a...