19 Sep CRISPR: beginning to deliver

CRISPR Technology: Beginning to Deliver

The topic is based on Science and technology. It also talks about how CRISPR Technology impacts the importance of national and international relations. 

Prelims: The importance of national  and international relation

Mains: GS paper III, IT and space field awareness.

Why is it in the news?

CRISPR technology: Beginning to Deliver

• For the last 3 years, the gene–editing technology also known as CRISPR (Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats), with unlimited abilities has produced flawless results in Clinical Trials.
• India permitted a 5-year Project to develop CRISPR to eradicate, sickle cell anemia.

What is genome editing?

• These are a kind of DNA editing technology.
• By using genome editing technologies, scientists can change DNA, change the physical features of eye color, and reduce the disease risk.
• These technologies work like scissors, they cut the DNA in a particular spot, and after that scientists can add or remove, or can replace the DNA, where it was cut.
• During the late 1900s CRISPR technologies were developed around the world.s.

CRISPR technology

• CRISPR (Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) is a new genome editing tool developed in 2009.
• After the development of the CRISPR tool, it becomes easier to work with DNA than before.

Advantages

It is simpler, faster, low cost, and has more accuracy than the earlier invented editing tools.

•  It is a kind of unique technology, by which geneticists and medicine researchers edit the parts of the genome adding or altering portions of the DNA in living organisms  of DNA sequence
•  It is made of two molecules that introduced the change in DNA

What is CRISPR-Cas9 technology?

• They are enzymes named Cas9.
• It works as a pair of “molecular scissors “, which can cut the two strands of DNA at a particular location in the genome so that bits of DNA can alter.
•  A small piece of RNA is known as RNA (gRNA).
• It is made of a small piece of pre-designed RNA sequence (about 20 bases long) located in a longer RNA scaffold.
• The scaffold part binds to DNA and the pre-designed sequence ‘guides’ Cas9 to the correct amount of the genome
• This ensures that the Cas9 enzyme cuts the DNA at the correct point in the genome.
• Scientists can use DNA repair machinery to introduce changes to one or more genes. in the genome of a cell of interest.
•  The guide RNA is structured in a way to locate and find the binds to a specific sequence in the DNA.
• The guide RNA has the RNA bases that complement the targeted DNA sequence in the genome.
• The Cas9 follows the guide RNA to the exact location, in the DNA sequence and makes a cut across both strands of the DNA.
• In this stage, the cell recognizes the damaged DNA and then tries to repair it.

sources

• NIH (The national human genome research institute)
• The Indian Express (CRISPR: beginning to deliver)
• YourGenome (What is CRISPR-Cas9?)

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Plutus IAS Current affairs eng med 19th Sep 2022

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