(...) the secret of genome editing is to cut DNA at just the right spot, and let the cell's DNA repair mechanisms do the rest for you. In practice, this means finding a molecule that, if added to a cell, will bind to a specific DNA sequence and cut the DNA at that point.(...)
Yet although there are now various tricks for speeding up the process of creating a designer DNA-binding protein, it is still far from easy. It can still take months or years of work to do yourself, or cost tens of thousands of dollars to have it done for you. To complicate matters further, much of the underlying technology has been patented.
Now, though, there is an alternative that is much faster, cheaper and – so far – freely available to all. The story of how it came about begins in the late 1980s. While studying the genome of the E. coli bacterium, a group in Japan noticed a peculiar series of repeating sequences, separated by what appeared to be random bits of DNA that were later called "spacers". These characteristic sets of repeats and spacers are now known as clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, or CRISPR (pronounced "crisper").(...)
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