Diverse evolutionary roots and mechanistic variations of the CRISPR-Cas systems
Author(s)
Mohanraju, Prarthana
Makarova, Kira S.
Koonin, Eugene V.
van der Oost, John
Zetsche, Bernd
Zhang, Feng
Date Issued
August 2016
Journal
Science
Publisher
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Citation
Mohanraju, Prarthana et al. “Diverse Evolutionary Roots and Mechanistic Variations of the CRISPR-Cas Systems.” Science 353, 6299 (August 2016): aad5147 © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Adaptive immunity had been long thought of as an exclusive feature of animals. However, the discovery of the CRISPR-Cas defense system, present in almost half of prokaryotic genomes, proves otherwise. Because of the everlasting parasite-host arms race, CRISPR-Cas has rapidly evolved through horizontal transfer of complete loci or individual modules, resulting in extreme structural and functional diversity. CRISPR-Cas systems are divided into two distinct classes that each consist of three types and multiple subtypes. We discuss recent advances in CRISPR-Cas research that reveal elaborate molecular mechanisms and provide for a plausible scenario of CRISPR-Cas evolution. We also briefly describe the latest developments of a wide range of CRISPR-based applications.
MIT Department
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aad5147
