2012
A Programmable Dual-RNA-Guided DNA Endonuclease in Adaptive Bacterial Immunity
The paper that turned a bacterial immune trick into programmable genome editing. Medicine is still catching up.
“Our study reveals a family of endonucleases that use dual-RNAs for site-specific DNA cleavage and highlights the potential to exploit the system for RNA-programmable genome editing.”
From immune system to editor
Bacteria store viral fragments and use CRISPR RNA to guide Cas proteins to matching DNA. Jinek et al. reconstituted Cas9 in vitro and showed a single guide RNA can target a chosen sequence.
Programmable cuts
Double-strand breaks at precise locations let cells repair or accept donor templates. The word programmable is literal: the guide sequence is the program.
A different kind of paper
Not computer science, but the same arc as Turing and Shannon: understand a natural mechanism, formalize it, unleash engineering. Biotechnology's "attention moment" for DNA.
← previous · 2012
A Few Useful Things to Know About Machine Learning
next · 2015 →
Constructor Theory of Information