Over the past decade, CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing has revolutionized science, explains a Cornell Research profile of Ailong Ke, professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics. Lauded as a breakthrough in biogenetics and medicine, the CRISPR mechanism evolved naturally, probably more than a billion years ago, Ke said; scientists have harnessed it for gene editing, but they didn’t create it.
“The general public may think that CRISPR was born for genome-editing work, but it’s actually the workhorse of a natural immunity system found in bacteria and archaea,” Ke said in the Cornell Research article. “It fights off viruses by slicing and shredding the viruses’ genome into pieces.”
