Pandemic

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On the warm summer day of August 17, 2012, the newly released issue of Science magazine contained an article about bacterial immunity with a title so esoteric that late-night talk-show hosts could have used it in their monologues to make fun of scientific gobbledygook. But the article’s publication has turned out to be an enormously important biological watershed event, despite the modest prediction offered in its concluding sentence that the mechanisms described therein “could offer considerable potential for gene targeting and genome applications.”[1]

Seldom has there been such an understatement, as the potential has already become a virtual explosion of applications. The Science article was the first to introduce the world to a biologically active chimeric molecule called CRISPR/CAS9, which had been engineered from a bacterial immune system that had evolved to counter viral invaders. This extraordinary molecule made up of three easily produced and inexpensive bacterial components can be custom-tailored to seek out and alter genes in plants or animals. All at once, even a high school student armed with readily available low-cost reagents and a little instruction could learn to modify the genetic makeup of living cells, which can pass on the changes to daughter cells. With CRISPR/CAS9, any gene whose sequence is known can be removed, replaced, turned on, or turned off, and all this can be done in the equivalent of someone’s garage. It is that easy. Heretofore, such a capability existed only in the futuristic dreams of academic molecular biologists with huge, expensive laboratories at their disposal.

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