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What is CRISPR-Cas9?

  • CRISPR (pronounced ‘crisper’) stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, and is the hallmark of a bacterial defence system that forms the basis for CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing technology
  • CRISPR-Cas9 is a unique technology that enables geneticists and medical researchers to precisely edit parts of the genome by removing, adding or altering sections of the DNA sequence
  • It is faster, cheaper and more accurate than previous techniques of editing DNA and has a wide range of potential applications
  • With these systems, researchers can permanently modify genes in living cells and organisms and, in the future, may make it possible to correct mutations at precise locations in the human genome in order to treat genetic causes of disease