CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) is a recently discovered gene-editing technology that utilizes the bacterial innate immune system to detect specific regions of the genome using an RNA template.
The enzyme, Cas9, is directed to the target where it cleaves the DNA, allowing specific gene sequences to be inserted, deleted, or replaced.
The DNA is broken three nucleotides from the end of the target sequence, and bits of genetic code are then inserted or deleted in a seemingly haphazard way as the cell attempts to repair the break.
