{"id":97372,"date":"2019-10-12T18:04:13","date_gmt":"2019-10-13T01:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/researchers-turn-crispr-into-a-virus-killing-machine"},"modified":"2019-10-12T18:04:13","modified_gmt":"2019-10-13T01:04:13","slug":"researchers-turn-crispr-into-a-virus-killing-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/researchers-turn-crispr-into-a-virus-killing-machine","title":{"rendered":"Researchers Turn CRISPR Into a Virus-Killing Machine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/researchers-turn-crispr-into-a-virus-killing-machine2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>On the surface, Ebola and the flu might not seem all that similar \u2014 one can cause organ failure or death, while the other usually just makes you feel really crummy \u2014 but they actually have the same underlying cause: an RNA-based virus.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the type of virus behind some of the most common \u2014 and deadly \u2014 illnesses in the world, and researchers have just discovered a way to use the powerful <a href=\"https:\/\/www.broadinstitute.org\/news\/crispr-enzyme-programmed-kill-viruses-human-cells\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">gene-editing technology CRISPR<\/a> in the fight against them.<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday, a team lead by researchers from Harvard and MIT\u2019s Broad Institute published a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cell.com\/molecular-cell\/fulltext\/S1097-2765(19)30698-7#%20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">study<\/a> in the journal <em>Molecular Cell<\/em> detailing their creation of CARVER (Cas13-Assisted Restriction of Viral Expression and Readout), a system that utilizes the <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/neoscope\/crisprdiagnostic-tool-detect-genetic-mutations-infections\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">CRISPR enzyme Cas13<\/a>, which \u201cnaturally targets viral RNA in bacteria,\u201d according to a Broad Institute <a href=\"https:\/\/www.broadinstitute.org\/news\/crispr-enzyme-programmed-kill-viruses-human-cells\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">press release<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On the surface, Ebola and the flu might not seem all that similar \u2014 one can cause organ failure or death, while the other usually just makes you feel really crummy \u2014 but they actually have the same underlying cause: an RNA-based virus. That\u2019s the type of virus behind some of the most common \u2014 [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97372","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\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}