Question

What seminal discovery of the CRISPR systems in the 1990s helped establish the paradigm for current gene editing approaches?

Answer 1

In 1990 CRISPR was first observed as bacterial immune mechanism. The enzymes called Cas9 of bacteria cuts the short segment of viral DNA on its entry and incorporates into bacterial genome, which used in the recognition of same virus later entry. Thus a series of short interspaced DNA sequences in bacteria devirved from the viruses are called CRISPR were found in bacteria.

By this mechanism, developed the idea of using CRISPR/Cas9 as gene editing tool in 2008. This is simple because Cas9 with the help of guide RNA attached to the target DNA sequence and cleaves the target sequence.

Thus the early discovery of CRISPR (Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) in the bacterial genome lead to the recent discovery of gene editing tool.