News - New Gene-Targeting Protein Discovered

[Paul Schroeer-Hannemann]

I came across this article recently on LinkedIn:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2013/03/19/the-protein-that-could-change-biotech-forever/?goback=%2Egde_35214_member_225071500

It states that some scientists at Danesco found a bacterial protein, Cas9, that targets and destroys specific segments of DNA.  It defends the bacterium from bacteriophages.  The article suggests that paired with RNA transcripts it can be used to edit genes with unparalleled precision.

What do you guys think?

[Dakota Hamill]

Very interesting. The part about the bacteria storing "mug shots" of
known viral DNA in order to more quickly recognize it upon
re-infection was amazing, and something I had never heard about. I
understand restriction enzymes can serve as defense proteins by
chopping up foreign DNA, but seem rather akin to dropping a bomb on a
target, in the hopes of killing something, whereas the mRNA guided
Cas9 protein seems like a heat-seeking missile to viral DNA, or
whatever DNA is in the CRISPR's. I've never even read about zinc
finger nucleases, they are different from Cas9 correct?

Upon reading you can immediately start brainstorming all sorts of
potential applications and ideas!

New England Biolabs is two cities over from me, and their claim to
fame is being one of the first (if not the first) companies to sell
purified restriction enzymes, which we all know now are irreplaceable
tools in everyday molecular bio. The company is worth hundreds of
millions. I wonder if a new set of proteins like Cas9 could also
serve as a platform for a multi million dollar company, if purified
and characterized.

Better get to making some yogurt.


Thanks for sharing the article.

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[Koeng]

I have known about CRISPR system longer then I have known about Zinc fingers xD. However, I never knew how they really really worked, but know I am thinking of using them in a series of experiments I am planning for gene deletion. How about a plasmid containing CRISPR (entire system) and using the gibson assembly to ligate specific DNA into the set for the Cas9 to destroy. But I was thinking perhaps it would either kill the cell or not successfully delete the gene of interest.........

-Koeng

[Nathan McCorkle]

This is actually a few months old,
Editing the genome with high precision
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/diybio/T-FkwZz5tBI/kw2_h6TkrJkJ

They authors also started a google group

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/crispr

and here is one of the original papers:

http://zlab.mit.edu/reprints/Cong_Science_2013.pdf

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-Nathan

[shreyans chordia]

It will kill the cell if you do not have the nicking form of Cas9. But with the nicking form you can insert DNA into the gene u target and disrupt it. OR you can make ds nicks on both sides of the target gene.