{"id":93041,"date":"2019-07-02T12:02:43","date_gmt":"2019-07-02T19:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/scissors-get-stuck-another-way-bacteria-use-crispr-cas9"},"modified":"2019-07-02T12:02:43","modified_gmt":"2019-07-02T19:02:43","slug":"scissors-get-stuck-another-way-bacteria-use-crispr-cas9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/07\/scissors-get-stuck-another-way-bacteria-use-crispr-cas9","title":{"rendered":"Scissors get stuck\u2014another way bacteria use CRISPR\/Cas9"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scissors-get-stuck-another-way-bacteria-use-crispr-cas92.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In biotech these days, CRISPR\/Cas9 is a hot topic, because of its utility as a precise gene editing tool. Before humans repurposed it, CRISPR\/Cas9 was a sort of internal immune system bacteria use to defend themselves against phages, or viruses that infect bacteria, by slicing up the phages\u2019 DNA.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists at Emory University School of Medicine and the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens have found that the \u201cscissors\u201d component of CRISPR\/Cas9 sometimes gets stuck.<\/p>\n<p>Cas9, an enzyme that cuts DNA, can also block <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/gene+activity\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">gene activity<\/a> without doing any cutting. In the pathogenic bacterium Francisella novicida, Cas9 regulates <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/genes\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">genes<\/a> that need to be shut off for the bacteria to cause disease.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In biotech these days, CRISPR\/Cas9 is a hot topic, because of its utility as a precise gene editing tool. Before humans repurposed it, CRISPR\/Cas9 was a sort of internal immune system bacteria use to defend themselves against phages, or viruses that infect bacteria, by slicing up the phages\u2019 DNA. Scientists at Emory University School of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93041\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}