ABOVE: © ISTOCK.COM, LUCKYSTEP48
By analyzing microbial genomes, researchers have found what may be evolutionary ancestors of the Cas9 enzyme that snips out bits of DNA during CRISPR genome editing, according to a study published last week in Science.
According to Nature, the role of the microbial IscB protein family was unknown prior to the analysis, although IscB genes can be found in bacteria, archaea, and even inside algal chloroplasts. The researchers found that IscB genes sit near stretches of the genome coding for RNA molecules that guide the IscB protein to specific regions of DNA that it can cleave, similar to the guide RNA Cas9 uses to find its genetic target.
The bacteria-based CRISPR-Cas9 system was first proposed as a gene-editing tool by Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, who won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work. Although scientists think it originated as a defense system against ...
